Keyboard Layouts

Recently started using Neo2 again after a four-year break or so. I'm German, and it's great.

I use helix (i.e. more or less vim-like shortcuts). Navigation works decently through Layer 4. Escape is pretty easy to access through this layer, and the colon character and the arrow-up key as well. In general it seems advisable to also use the bottom row of Layer 4 e.g. for Escape, Tab, Colon, (Semicolon). But here's what for me is the killer config for a decent helix experience:

[keys.insert]
"¿" = ":write"
"¡" = "command mode"
# and the same for [keys.normal] and if you will [keys.insert]

With that, the extremely common workflow of "save file, then run the previous command again" becomes as easy as simply holding down Mod4 and typing, in QWERTY key positions, h y e v. To edit the command before running, I can use h y e w [w w w...], and for running it I can of course also use Return instead of Mod4+v.

On the other hand, for entering command mode in order to type something new, I prefer, in QWERTY key positions, Mod4+z n