⌨️ multilayout.nvim

Write your КуМир code blazingly fast!

🤔 What this plugin does?

This plugin aims to fix some common problems that occur for users with multiple keyboard layouts. It teaches vim to understand alternative layouts and automatically convert between them and the standard qwerty (or any other layout if you want!).

You won't need to think about switching layouts anymore: for example, if you write in Russian, you can type сшц and it will be automatically converted into ciw. This also works for commands! If you have built muscle memory for saving files via :w, you won't need to check which language you're typing in! Just write :ц and vim will understand what you mean.

🛠️ Installation & Configuration

Add the plugin using your preferred manager:

-- Minimal configuration for russian layout using lazy.nvim
require("lazy").setup({{ "mrsobakin/multilayout.nvim", opts = {
    layouts = {
        ru = "ru",
    },
    -- Enable if you want to have full multilayout.nvim functionality.
    use_libukb = false,
}}})

Default config and options description:

local config = {
    -- (unset by default)
    layouts = {
        -- Either table or string layout preset name (`ru`).
        ru = {
            -- Names of this layout, as `libukb` reports.
            names = { "Russian" },
            -- Character conversion table.
            -- You may specify only the differing characters.
            from  = [[ёйцукенгшщзхъфывапролджэячсмитьбю.Ё"№;:?ЙЦУКЕНГШЩЗХЪ/ФЫВАПРОЛДЖЭЯЧСМИТЬБЮ,]],
            to    = [[`qwertyuiop[]asdfghjkl;'zxcvbnm,./~@#$^&QWERTYUIOP{}|ASDFGHJKL:"ZXCVBNM<>?]],
        }
    },
    aliases = {
        -- Maximal length of default commands aliases.
        -- Increasing this value can lead to longer startup times.
        max_length = 2,
        -- Extra commands that you want to alias.
        -- They are aliased regardless of `max_length`.
        extra = { "sort" },
    },
    -- Whether to use `libukb`. If this is set to false, `langmap`
    -- won't automatically switch when your layout does.
    use_libukb = false,
    -- Path to the `libukb.so` or `libukb.dll`. If `nil`, prebuilt library
    -- will be automatically downloaded and placed in the Neovim data directory.
    libukb_path = nil,
    -- Function of type `callback(layout: string)`. Called whenever
    -- current keyboard layout changes.
    callback = nil,
}

If you want to use all multilayout.nvim features, you should enable use_libukb. It will be installed automatically (requires wget and tar on Linux and powershell on Windows).

Currently, ukb suports only a small subset of platforms. You can see a full list of supported platforms here.

💡 FAQ

⚖️ How does this plugin differ from the langmapper.nvim?

multilayout.nvim is different from langmapper.nvim in almost every way! In fact, these plugins functionality does not intersect at all — quite the opposite, they complement each other.

While langmapper primarily focuses on translating mappings, multilayout translates motions and commands. In other words, while langmapper fixes your fzf's <leader>ff, multilayout fixes your ciw, gcc and :w's.

I highly recommend you to check out langmapper if you want to have the complete shift-alt-less experience.

🤓☝️ How does this plugin work?

For converting motions, this plugin utilizes builtin vim functionality — langmap. In fact, this is why most of the motions work with langmapper.nvim: it's default config recommends you to configure the langmap. So, you can make most of the motions work even without plugins.

But multilayout.nvim does a bit more than that! First of all, it automatically generates the langmap for you. And second — this is where all the magic starts — it is able to switch the langmap depending on your current layout. Some characters are present on both layouts, but placed in different physical locations, which makes it impossible to use a single langmap for all layouts. multilayout.nvim solves that problem using ukb — a universal keyboard utility. The coolest part is that it does not spawn any additional processes — libukb is loaded directly via LuaJIT's ffi.

Commands are translated using cabbrev aliases. You can read about them below in the special thanks section.

🔗 Special thanks to:

• This ancient article about cabbrev
• langmapper.nvim, for the non-ascii character splitting function*
• Dudes developing NeoVim for the awesome NeoVim API documentation