3 ms·
I switched from vim, to emacs evil, to vanilla emacs, had pain, bought a keyboard with a thumb cluster, been good ever since.
by ParetoOptimal 3y ago
I switched from vim, to emacs evil, to vanilla emacs, had pain, bought a keyboard with a thumb cluster, been good ever since.
- dempedempe 3y agoKeyboards with thumb clusters are definitely the best option, but in my experience, even on a normal keyboard, simply remapping your keys makes a world of difference. Here are some of my most useful remaps: - Swap enter and semicolon. Enter is one of my most used keys. It should be "directly accessible" - Make right command backspace. Backspace is another key I very commonly use, but it's far away and causes a lot of pain. Now, it's right under my thumb! (Regular backspace key is now forward delete). - Make caps lock and enter control. (When pressed with other keys). This is useful for Emacs commands. - Caps lock is escape when not pressed with other keys. - Enter is semicolon when not pressed with other keys. I use Karabiner for Mac to do my remappings.
- globular-toast 3y agoThe "when not pressed with other keys" stuff is interesting. I never thought about that. The only trouble I can see with this is being unable to type effectively on a normie keyboard. I've had the ctrl/caps swap for years and I regular mess it up on a normie keyboard, although it's no big deal to accidentally press caps, of course. What I like is my portable mechanical keyboard has a physical switch, so it works whatever computer I plug it in to.
- globular-toast 3y agoWhat keyboard do you use? Even though, as I wrote above, Emacs does not require finger contortions, I do do finger contortions. I doubt I'll ever stop using Emacs but I have always been a little concerned about my little fingers ("pinkies"). So the options seem to be either evil mode, or a new keyboard, both of which require busting a decade's worth of muscle memory...