qmk_firmware/keyboards/splitkb/aurora/helix/keymaps/default/readme.md

Aurora Helix's Default Keymap

This keymap is a copy of the Helix default keymap, with slight modifications.

A simple default keymap for the Aurora Helix

Keymaps in general are quite personal, so it is difficult to come up with a default that will suit every user. We hope this keymap serves as a good starting point for your own - although it should be fairly usable out-of-the-box.

What do all these layers do?

Layer 0: Base layer

This is where your basic letters live.

The homing thumb fingers are used to access the different layers.

• The homing second to left thumb finger gives access to the Symbols (or lower) layer
• The homing second to right thumb finger gives access to the Navigation (or raise) layer
• Pressing both homing thumb fingers gives access to the Adjust layer

Layer 1: Lower

The Lower layer gives access to the F keys, symbols and media control.

Layer 2: Raise

The Raise layer gives access to additional numbers keys, F keys.

Layer 3: Adjust

The Adjust layer exposes RGB adjustment keys on the right hand and additional configuration keys.

Where is the keymap.c?

The keymap.c file is not published to the repository. It is generated from keymap.json by the build system.

This avoids duplicating information and allow users to edit their keymap from the QMK Configurator web interface.

How do I edit and update the keymap?

The keymap.json file is generated from the QMK Configurator interface and formatted for better readability in the context of the Ferris keyboard.

To edit it, you may:

• Edit it directly from a text editor.
• Edit it from the QMK Configurator.

If you decide to use the latter workflow, here are the steps to follow:

• From the QMK Configurator, hit the "import QMK keymap json file" button (it has a drawing with an up arrow on it).
• Browse to the location of your keymap (for example, <your qmk repo>/keyboards/splitkb/aurora/helix/keymaps/default/keymap.json)
• Perform any modification to the keymap in the web UI
• Export the keymap to your downloads folder, by hitting the "Export QMK keymap json file" button (it has a drawing with a down arrow on it)
• Replace your original keymap with the one you just downloaded

Note: At the time of writing (the 24th of October 2022), not every feature used in the default keymap is supported by the QMK Configurator. You cannot yet upload the default keymap.json due to a file format mismatch - use the "Load Default" button to load the default keymap instead. Additionally, custom configuration options are still being worked on: if your keymap depends on them, please compile your firmware offline for now.

I want to do more than the JSON format supports!

While the json format is easy to use, it does lack certain functionality - most notably custom OLED or encoder behaviour.

To add this, you need to convert it to the c format. Do keep in mind that this is generally a one-way operation.

First, from the root of your qmk repo, move to your keymap folder

cd ./keyboards/splitkb/aurora/helix/keymaps/my_personal_keymap

Next, convert your keymap.json to a keymap.c

qmk json2c -o keymap.c keymap.json

You can add custom C code to the newly generated keymap.c file. Do note that you have to use either a C file or a JSON file - you cannot do both!
If a JSON file is present, the C file is ignored.