I am about to stop using my Kinesis Advantage as I want to move away from the key wells and while I was at it am looking to increase my use of hot keys. I have found I don't like key combinations much, I would rather just press a single key to perform whatever actions I have programmed. I like the utility of the G13 that allows you to easily program each key to perform a different action based on what program has the focus, for example one set of keys for Firefox, one for Visual Studio. The only downside seems to be that I will be moving my hands so much, instead of a more emacs style "press a key to change layers" type of setup which got me thinking....
Is there a tool that would allow me to press a key (or better yet a foot pedal) and switch my keyboard from it's normal configuration to being something more like a gaming board, where each key can be mapped to an action, preferably different for each application I am in. The ability to toggle it on and off with a foot switch would be awesome, but if that wasn't available just toggling it with a key press would be fine too, I just don't want to have to hold the key while pressing the other keys.
Is this possible? I looked at maybe trying to do something with AutoHotKey but the UI for that would suck compared to something more purpose built like the logitech utility which is when I decided I should ask the experts here. I'm open to suggestions, don't mind spending a few bucks if needed or buying a good program if there is a good utility available to help with this.
I have pretty severe RSI and while I already use voice control quite a bit I often find myself looking for something faster since voice recognition can be so slow compared to just tapping a key.