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Devil Mode for Emacs
- ripe 3y agoLove the idea! Gotta try it, to give my poor Emacs pinky a rest. I also like the audacious stealing of a common key like COMMA.
- seanw444 3y agoMode-specific comma key actions are something I never knew I wanted coming from other editors.
- bigdict 3y agoRemap Caps Lock to Ctrl.
- nimih 3y agoDo you not use your pinky to hit the caps lock key?
- bigdict 3y agoThe Caps Lock key sits a few millimeters away from where my pinky rests on the home row. The Ctrl key is a full inch away.
- cylinder714 3y agoAs described in the Devil manual, you can make the semicolon the active key instead of the comma--you don't even have to leave the home row to trigger commands.
- jacobsenscott 3y agoYES, BUT IT MAKES IT HARD TO YELL AT PEOPLE, AND THAT'S HOW I SPEND MOST OF MY TIME.
- n0on3 3y agoI am not quite sure what this says about me but I LMAO looking at this one, thanks
- lozf 3y agoI have an additional Ctrl on the CapsLock key, and use Both Shift keys to toggle Caps Lock mode - best of both worlds! setxkbmap -option shift:both_capslock -option compose:rctrl-altgr -option ctrl:nocaps -option lv3:ralt_switch
- KerrAvon 3y agothis is the way
- ris58h 3y agoSpacemacs for the rescue.
- accoil 3y agoYou might also find https://web.archive.org/web/20130512065149/http://www.andong.co.uk/dvorak/DDvorak.aspx?page=Light+DDvorak https://web.archive.org/web/20130512065149/http://www.andong... interesting. The theory is that since you only ever have a space after a comma, you can use it as a dead key, and just have ", " output ", ". That then frees all the other letter combos to be whatever key you want. There are other keyboard layouts out there with the same concept too: https://github.com/workman-layout/Workman/tree/master/mac#workman-dead-for-programmers https://github.com/workman-layout/Workman/tree/master/mac#wo...
- rollcat 3y agoIf this sounds interesting, make sure to check out Spacemacs[0], which uses a similar principle (tapping a leader key - space), but transforms the editing experience in a much more radical way (evil-mode and such). I've used Spacemacs for a while, and was quite happy with it, but I wanted a more lightweight editor for the terminal, something I can use on servers and embedded devices without installing an entire Emacs and a zillion packages. So my Emacs setup is much more standard nowadays, and I use mg[1] otherwise. [0]: https://www.spacemacs.org/ https://www.spacemacs.org/ [1]: https://man.openbsd.org/mg https://man.openbsd.org/mg
- microtonal 3y agoAlso Doom Emacs, which is really stable (pins dependencies), fast and has great defaults: https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs Also, don’t use pinky for controls —— home row mods all the way.
- seanw444 3y agoI started with Spacemacs as my intro to Emacs (coming from VS Code, learning both Vim keybinds and getting the power of Emacs was very intriguing), and I think Spacemacs is much better for total beginners. I eventually felt comfortable enough to move to Doom Emacs and start writing my own config additions, which Doom is much better for imo.
- TheFreim 3y agoI haven't used other configuration frameworks, so this may exist elsewhere, but really appreciate dooms cohesive configuration scheme.
- avbanks 3y agoSwitching from Neovim to Doom Emacs has been such a pleasant experience.
- aldanor 3y ago
- Blackthorn 3y agoIt's really cool how emacs has created such a great diversity of control key systems. I use the defaults because I don't use home row, but what a wonderful and powerful experience that users have been able to gather together and create such ecosystems. Thanks Emacs, and here's to many more years with you and many more audacious ideas like this one.
- tmtvl 3y ago> I use the defaults because I don't use home row That's funny, I use the defaults because I do use home row. That said, I do use Dvorak, so that may explain why things seems to work better for me than the average other user.
- TheFreim 3y ago> It's really cool how emacs has created such a great diversity of control key systems. It's really cool, to say the least. Ive been seriously considering using emacs as a base for building a UI for a project I'm planning that is heavily text based, would be useful since I could define a default keymap and leverage emacs to allow advanced customization without having to clutter the base user experience.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoOne of these days, I will get around to making the ultimate emacs UI: zero defaults. Give me a way to set and organize keybinds, good documentation, and nothing else. Every time I need a new keybind, I must explicitly decide what it will be. Inconvenient? So is learning the default, or worse, figuring out how my unique config accommodates that default. It would be more work now for less work later. It would also move the work of UI/UX design into the same step as UI/UX learning; which I consider the most sensible place and time to do that work.
- jandrese 3y agoAs someone who works on many different machines during the day the defaults are the only thing that matters. Moving your environment around to every machine you touch is completely impractical and in some cases straight up disallowed by the rules of the lab.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoThankfully for me, 9999/10000 times, I'm using my own system. On the off chance I am using someone else's system, I probably won't be doing anything particularly interesting or staying very long. On top of that, I can usually bring my keyboard, which itself contains most of my divergence from norm. If customisability were really as available as it should be, it would be trivial to change between configurations. After all, the only technical hurdle is that most software is built on UI/UX assumptions.
- spudlyo 3y agoI used to think this way until I spent some time working with and tuning my TRAMP setup. Now that Eglot is shipped with Emacs 29 I've switched from lsp-mode, and lo and behold, dealing with remote LSP servers is a lot easier. I was a hardcore terminal Emacs and tmux user, but have since switched to GUI Emacs and multi-vterm and was able to retain much of my tmux muscle memory. I now am routinely editing files on a handful of different machines every day, and it's mostly great. I still have to call tramp-cleanup-all-connections to deal with the occasional hangs after a few days of idle time, but I'm pretty happy.
- kleiba 3y agoSee also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35849788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35849788
- zvmaz 3y agoThere's also Meow[1], which I currently use. You have to configure it first to suit your keyboard layout, but there are pre-built configs [2] [1] https://github.com/meow-edit/meow https://github.com/meow-edit/meow [2] https://github.com/meow-edit/meow/blob/master/TUTORIAL.org#keybindings-cheat-sheet https://github.com/meow-edit/meow/blob/master/TUTORIAL.org#k...
- FullyFunctional 3y agoMy controls are handles by my thumbs (Kinesis Advantage) and I fail to see the advantage here as you are using the same amount of energy, but fail badly for cases where control could have been held down (eg. compare Ctrl-down p-down p-up p-down p-up Ctrl-up to ,-dn ,-up, p-dn, p-up, etc).
- slondr 3y agoI use a kinesis at work and I hate hate hate the placement of Alt. I always have to move my hand entirely and stretching from alt to x is unergonomic and annoying.
- andbberger 3y agoyou can easily remap it??
- FullyFunctional 3y agoThe first thing I did (28 years ago) was to remap Delete and Alt, swapping them, pretty much a necessity if you are an Emacs user. On the standard keyboard it's literally just Prgm Del Alt Alt Del Prgm. However I have since replace the keyboard controller and use my own firmware now in where the swap is hard coded.
- kstrauser 3y agoEvery bit of this horrifies me, and I can't believe you've done it. Outstanding. Well done!
- krupan 3y agoHaving used emacs for 20-ish years, this actually looks amazing. If you didn't RTFA, this is not another vi mode. This replaces holding down Ctrl with tapping comma to get all of emacs' keybindings. It is incredibly clever in the way it does it and I can't wait to try. I think it will make using emacs more ergonomic with regular keyboards and much more so with a phone touchscreen.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Decabytes 3y agoOn Linux and macOS I change Capslock to Control in the settings. On Windows I download Power Toys and do the same thing. Makes Emacs so much more useable
- nine_k 3y agoKudos for the very thoughtful write-up explaining the choices between particular mapping decisions.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xigoi 3y agoEven better idea: How about if you pressed the comma, it would temporarily cause all subsequent keystrokes to be interpreted as if with the Ctrl modifier? Then you could press another key to go back to inserting text. In fact, the editor could even start in the “comma” state because usually after opening a file, you want to first navigate around before inserting text. And to allow typing commas easily, we could just use the escape key instead. I'm sure no one has ever thought of this before.
- gigatexal 3y agoHey now … you’re describing vi ;)
- pkulak 3y agoThe idea that a comma is nearly always followed by space or new line, and can therefor be useful is pretty genius though. A few years ago someone mentioned they map "jj" to escape in vim and I've been doing it ever since. Have you ever had to type two j's' next to each other? I haven't in several years now. :D Only problem is inserting a dozen 'j's before I realize what's going on when I'm on a remote machine...
- Avshalom 3y ago["string","string"] and [1,2], that is comma-quote and comma-number are both fairly common. Granted ModKey-(#|") is also pretty unlikely to be a command
- 3y ago
- sph 3y agoEh, good timing. I just migrated my config to evil. I gave the Emacs keybinds a year long chance, got a split keyboard with Emacs-friendly custom keymap (Alt under my left thumb, Ctrl under my right thumb) and life was pretty good, but I can now say that vim editing is hands down better than any Emacs incantation. That said, vim+Emacs together are even better than each in isolation. Nothing beats modal editing, with access to C-a, C-e, and other Emacs movement keys to be used in INSERT mode. The default evil config should promote this hybrid approach, rather than trying to turn Emacs into vim. Devil mode looks interesting, but still not as good as a true modal experience.
- 123sereusername 3y agoI don't understand wny.
- elif 3y agoAgree this is like how to play tennis with a baseball bat.
- dan-robertson 3y agoIt didn’t take me long to start getting hand pain from using Emacs when I started using it a lot. I considered learning the technique of using the ball of my hand to press control. But instead of switching to vi it getting an Emacs hand brace, I ended up switching to a keyboard where I had modifier keys on my thumbs. That was like five years ago and I’ve been fine since then.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ris58h 3y agoIt should have "Show HN" in the title.