5 ms·

> C-e, C-f, M-b, M-f Why these strange shortcuts when any keyboard has arrow keys and they can be used with a control modifier to move by words? I can underst

by ordu 4y ago

> C-e, C-f, M-b, M-f Why these strange shortcuts when any keyboard has arrow keys and they can be used with a control modifier to move by words? I can understand why to use C-a, C-e, because laptop keyboards tend to have "Home" and "End" keys in strange places, but those... And Emacs documentation for some reason insists on using C-e, C-f instead of arrow keys.

Guillaume86 4y ago
On laptop one requirement I have is having these: fn+left/right -> home/end fn+up/down -> page up/down It's probably been 20 years I have laptops that support it and I'm perfectly fine/fast to manipulate text with the keyboard.
gabrielgio 4y ago
Not a eMacs person, but as a vim user arrow keys are annoying to reach. Using control or vim bindings it is far easier for me
- nanna 4y ago
  It's Emacs not eMacs! ;) https://irreal.org/blog/?p=10973 https://irreal.org/blog/?p=10973)
  - gabrielgio 4y ago
    TIL people write eMacs on purpose. Mine was just iPhone's autocorrector as someone mentioned in the comments.
skydhash 4y ago
Ctrl used to be where Caps Lock is on some keyboards and today, you can map Caps Lock to Ctrl in Mac OS snd Linux. It will make more sense when you do that as pressing the shortcut will be much easier (home row).
bogantech 4y ago
> Why these strange shortcuts when any keyboard has arrow keys and they can be used with a control modifier to move by words? There was a time before PC's when keyboards didn't necessarily have Arrow keys
Symbiote 4y ago
They work everywhere. Decades ago, the Home/End/PgUp etc keys might not work on all terminals. You can use the standard keyboard movement keys if you prefer. (The letters are mnemonics, Back, Forward, Next line, Previous line, End of line, start of line uses A as the first letter. The control key tends to do smaller things (like move one letter or line) while the alt/meta key does bigger or less-common things, like move whole words, sentences or paragraphs. See https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Moving-Point.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Mo...)
- pwg 4y ago
  > Decades ago, the Home/End/PgUp etc keys might not work on all terminals. Decades ago, on real serial terminals, the terminal keyboard likely did not even have Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys [1]. That is the reason for the seeming odd mappings now in 2022 after almost every computer has a keyboard that contains nearly the same set of 'extra' keys. When readline was developed, there was no IBM-PC keyboard layout (because readline predates the IBM-PC) and besides the basic letters, numbers and punctuation keys there were very few other keys that were available on all keyboards at the time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mappa_Teletype_ASR-33.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mappa_Teletype_ASR-33.jpg https://vt100.net/docs/vt100-ug/chapter3.html https://vt100.net/docs/vt100-ug/chapter3.html (see "The Keyboard")
olau 4y ago
C-f(orwards) C-b(ackwards) The reason you use them is that they allow you to not leave the home row. So say you're writing something and need to move back and delete a mistype, it's much faster to do that with C-b C-b C-b backspace <letter> M-f than moving your right hand to the arrow keys and moving it back to type the letter and then moving it to the arrow keys again. Now, lot's of people can't be bothered to take the time to learn them. You need to go through the Emacs tutorial and perhaps spend a day or two getting used to them. That's all it takes. Similarly, most programmers I personally know can't touch type. That takes a few hours of practice with a fun, gamified touch typing program for a couple of weeks, and then you have set part of your mind free. But people can't be bothered.
- vanous 4y ago
  >The reason you use them is that they allow you to not leave the home row How do you press the control key or the alt key while touch typing without loosing home row position? For alt, I try using my thumb, extremely folded down, but for control...?
  - donatzsky 4y ago
    Your pinky. Many do remap ctrl to caps-lock, though, since it's more ergonomic and caps-lock is a bit useless anyway.
- saurik 4y ago
  > Similarly, most programmers I personally know can't touch type. OMG, seriously?
- vanous 4y ago
  >Similarly, most programmers I personally know can't touch type. That takes a few hours of practice with a fun, gamified touch typing program for a couple of weeks, and then you have set part of your mind free. But people can't be bothered. I would argue that it takes more then a few weeks, be prepared to wait/invest several months into it, but it is absolutely worth the investment. 100%.
chrisBob 4y ago
Who has time to move all of the way over to the arrow keys, tap a few times and then find the little tab on the J again? I have arrows behind a second layer on my keyboard with vim mapping, and I don't think I could give that up. If you spend all day in front of a keyboard you might as well learn to be efficient with it.
- TacticalCoder 4y ago
  > I have arrows behind a second layer on my keyboard with vim mapping Same here: second layer reachable from the hands' home position on the keyboard. Left thumb for the modifier + ijkl in my case (I like ijkl for it mimics an actual arrows key cluster). It works everywhere: xterm / command line, Emacs, any editor / IDE really, any dropdown menu... It's the way.
  - iso1631 4y ago
    jkl of course works on youtube, I find it really annoying when viewing other video sites which don't support these basic keybindings

by ordu 4y ago

Guillaume86 4y ago

On laptop one requirement I have is having these: fn+left/right -> home/end fn+up/down -> page up/down It's probably been 20 years I have laptops that support it and I'm perfectly fine/fast to manipulate text with the keyboard.

gabrielgio 4y ago

Not a eMacs person, but as a vim user arrow keys are annoying to reach. Using control or vim bindings it is far easier for me

nanna 4y ago
It's Emacs not eMacs! ;) https://irreal.org/blog/?p=10973 https://irreal.org/blog/?p=10973)
- gabrielgio 4y ago
  TIL people write eMacs on purpose. Mine was just iPhone's autocorrector as someone mentioned in the comments.

skydhash 4y ago

Ctrl used to be where Caps Lock is on some keyboards and today, you can map Caps Lock to Ctrl in Mac OS snd Linux. It will make more sense when you do that as pressing the shortcut will be much easier (home row).

bogantech 4y ago

> Why these strange shortcuts when any keyboard has arrow keys and they can be used with a control modifier to move by words? There was a time before PC's when keyboards didn't necessarily have Arrow keys

Symbiote 4y ago

They work everywhere. Decades ago, the Home/End/PgUp etc keys might not work on all terminals. You can use the standard keyboard movement keys if you prefer. (The letters are mnemonics, Back, Forward, Next line, Previous line, End of line, start of line uses A as the first letter. The control key tends to do smaller things (like move one letter or line) while the alt/meta key does bigger or less-common things, like move whole words, sentences or paragraphs. See https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Moving-Point.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Mo...)

pwg 4y ago
> Decades ago, the Home/End/PgUp etc keys might not work on all terminals. Decades ago, on real serial terminals, the terminal keyboard likely did not even have Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys [1]. That is the reason for the seeming odd mappings now in 2022 after almost every computer has a keyboard that contains nearly the same set of 'extra' keys. When readline was developed, there was no IBM-PC keyboard layout (because readline predates the IBM-PC) and besides the basic letters, numbers and punctuation keys there were very few other keys that were available on all keyboards at the time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mappa_Teletype_ASR-33.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mappa_Teletype_ASR-33.jpg https://vt100.net/docs/vt100-ug/chapter3.html https://vt100.net/docs/vt100-ug/chapter3.html (see "The Keyboard")

olau 4y ago

C-f(orwards) C-b(ackwards) The reason you use them is that they allow you to not leave the home row. So say you're writing something and need to move back and delete a mistype, it's much faster to do that with C-b C-b C-b backspace <letter> M-f than moving your right hand to the arrow keys and moving it back to type the letter and then moving it to the arrow keys again. Now, lot's of people can't be bothered to take the time to learn them. You need to go through the Emacs tutorial and perhaps spend a day or two getting used to them. That's all it takes. Similarly, most programmers I personally know can't touch type. That takes a few hours of practice with a fun, gamified touch typing program for a couple of weeks, and then you have set part of your mind free. But people can't be bothered.

vanous 4y ago
>The reason you use them is that they allow you to not leave the home row How do you press the control key or the alt key while touch typing without loosing home row position? For alt, I try using my thumb, extremely folded down, but for control...?
- donatzsky 4y ago
  Your pinky. Many do remap ctrl to caps-lock, though, since it's more ergonomic and caps-lock is a bit useless anyway.
saurik 4y ago
> Similarly, most programmers I personally know can't touch type. OMG, seriously?
vanous 4y ago
>Similarly, most programmers I personally know can't touch type. That takes a few hours of practice with a fun, gamified touch typing program for a couple of weeks, and then you have set part of your mind free. But people can't be bothered. I would argue that it takes more then a few weeks, be prepared to wait/invest several months into it, but it is absolutely worth the investment. 100%.

chrisBob 4y ago

Who has time to move all of the way over to the arrow keys, tap a few times and then find the little tab on the J again? I have arrows behind a second layer on my keyboard with vim mapping, and I don't think I could give that up. If you spend all day in front of a keyboard you might as well learn to be efficient with it.

TacticalCoder 4y ago
> I have arrows behind a second layer on my keyboard with vim mapping Same here: second layer reachable from the hands' home position on the keyboard. Left thumb for the modifier + ijkl in my case (I like ijkl for it mimics an actual arrows key cluster). It works everywhere: xterm / command line, Emacs, any editor / IDE really, any dropdown menu... It's the way.
- iso1631 4y ago
  jkl of course works on youtube, I find it really annoying when viewing other video sites which don't support these basic keybindings