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Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
- todd8 9y agoI've followed Xah's musings about keyboards for years; I don't agree with each and every one of his conclusions, but you've got to hand it to him, he has studied keyboards and key-bindings and keyboard ergonomics more than anyone else that I've seen on the web. I've used Emacs for decades, but still remember fondly the couple of years where I was forced to switch to vi with its modal operation (my employer was suspicious of GPL software). Periodically, I will try out Spacemacs (nice!) or neovim (a cool project); eventually, I go back to ordinary Emacs. My next experiment with key bindings is going to be Xah Fly Keys mode for Emacs. It is such a logically designed set of bindings. While no more mnemonic than vim/vi (the new key binding will take time to learn), it appears that his careful analysis of the most frequently used commands has resulted in Xah's bindings being very efficient while working with Emac's wide range of commands and modes. For example, Xah's work recognizes the difference between commands that may be immediately repeated (like forward-word) and those that are common, but are likely not to be repeated (i.e. switch-to-buffer). Any other HN readers using Xah Fly Keys?