compoBot — A bot to toot composekey sequences

The compose key (a.k.a. Multi Key) is a massively useful and (unfortunately) forgotten feature. It lets you type a keyboard sequence eg. <Multi_Key><t><m> and it inserts a special character: ™.

This bot regularly toots one of those sequences to a mastodon account so that everyone can appreciate them.

The sequences used, are standard on modern linux systems. However, the compose/multikey is usually not mapped on most keyboards. With xmodmap, it can be mapped to a rarely used key like menu or capslock. On windows systems, there is WinCompose to get similar results.

Usage

compoBot can be used from shell or docker. The prerequisits are minimal: sqlite3, curl and the standard tools.

It is configured by environment variables wich may be set in a file called env.

Variable	Default	Description
database	./compobot.db3 (/data/compobot.db3 on Docker)	Databasefile
minWait	43200 (=12 h)	Minimum random time to wait between toots in seconds
maxWait	86400 (=24 h)	Maximum random time to wait between toots in seconds
mtdVisibility	direct	Privacy setting for the toot¹ (public unlisted private direct)
mtdApi	https://mastodon.example/api/v1/statuses	API endpoint to sent statuses²
mtdToken	INSERT-YOUR-BEARER-TOKEN	API authentication²

¹) https://docs.joinmastodon.org/entities/status/ ²) https://docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/apps/#create-an-application