niri: Azerty keyboard numbers

[SibaldH]

Hey guys,
Same person

When I tried to setup my keybind with numbers to switch to different workspaces, I run into the issue that I have an Azerty keyboard.
So the key I press when I want to switch a workspace is ex. ( instead of 5.

When I try to add these in, there are some special characters, so I get some errors.

Is there a workaround for that?

I am aware that niri is working on adding keycodes.

Thx guys!

[BirdeeHub]

We allow you to provide keybindings via the settings.binds option.

settings.binds = {
  "Mod+0" = {
    focus-workspace = 0;
  };
  "Mod+Escape" = _: { };
  "Mod+J" = {
    focus-column-or-monitor-left = _: { };
  };
  "Mod+N" = {
    spawn = [
      "alacritty"
      "msg"
      "create-windown"
    ];
  };
  "Mod+T" = {
    spawn-sh = "alacritty";
  };
  "Mod+)" = { # <- presumably they would let you map it to the strange key? IDK how they do things
    spawn-sh = "alacritty";
  };
}

Would you mind showing what errors you were getting?

We just put the text in the file

We also escape it when we do so.

So, whatever you put should be faithfully translated into a kdl format and provided to niri without worrying about any weird escaping issues.

And it also runs niri validate on the config file provided, to give you better error messages at build time rather than runtime

If there is an error happening with that process we can fix it here. Otherwise, I am not sure. If you can specify it within the niri config file, you should be able to specify it here, and if you can't specify it there, then that would be an issue for them.

[BirdeeHub]

I didn't see the other issue btw, but now I have. I suppose you already knew the above info?

Unsure exactly what to do. But, we will provide whatever you provide to nix to the config file as written. So, theoretically, if they give you a way, we should be able to do it too.

Is the niri feature you are trying to use recent?

You might need to pull niri from their flake and pass it to the package option to override which version of niri it uses to be a different one than the one from the pkgs you provided.

[SibaldH]

I would expect that. This is the PR in niri that I was talking about:
niri-wm/niri#3366

[SibaldH]

          "Mod+&" = _: { content.focus-workspace = "w0"; };
          "Mod+é" = _: { content.focus-workspace = "w1"; };

The error:

error: builder for '/nix/store/4grbmi1g7xah22hpf1fzmgrx2iri0lxm-niri-25.11.drv' failed with exit code 1;
       last 25 log lines:
       > Error:   x error loading config
       >   |-> error parsing
       >   `-> error parsing KDL
       >
       > Error:   x invalid keybind
       >   |-> invalid keybind
       >   `-> invalid key: &
       >    ,-[niri-config.kdl:1:1]
       >  1 | "binds"  {
       >  2 |   "Mod+&"  {
       >    :   ^^^|^^^
       >    :      `-- invalid value
       >  3 |     "focus-workspace" "w0"
       >    `----
       > Error:   x invalid keybind
       >   |-> invalid keybind
       >   `-> invalid key: é
       >      ,-[niri-config.kdl:109:1]
       >  109 |   }
       >  110 |   "Mod+é"  {
       >      :   ^^^|^^^
       >      :      `-- invalid value
       >  111 |     "focus-workspace" "w1"
       >      `----
       >
       For full logs, run:
         nix log /nix/store/4grbmi1g7xah22hpf1fzmgrx2iri0lxm-niri-25.11.drv

[BirdeeHub]

Built it in the repl (by removing the niri validate check by overriding drv.installPhase)

outputs.wrappers.niri.wrap {
  inherit pkgs;
  drv.installPhase = pkgs.lib.mkForce "";
  settings.binds."Mod+&".focus-workspace = "w0";
  settings.binds."Mod+é".focus-workspace = "w1";
}

It produces this kdl file:

"binds"  {
  "Mod+&"  {
    "focus-workspace" "w0"
  }
  "Mod+é"  {
    "focus-workspace" "w1"
  }
}
"layout"  {

}

I'm not super sure what to do with this information, but it does not appear to be an escaping bug.

It seems like niri literally just does not accept those values as keybindings.

Is there some cli argument we have to pass to enable that? You could do that with config.flags if there is.

Otherwise, pull the niri flake and put config.package = inputs.niri.packages.${pkgs.stdenv.hostPlatform.system}.default; and wait for them to add the feature I suppose.

Added a boolean option disableConfigValidation for disabling that check so ppl don't have to drv.installPhase = pkgs.lib.mkForce ""; to debug in situations like these #459