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The first link in the description "Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts Are Painful" is a pretty good read. I initially tried to submit it, but it was autokilled it s

The first link in the description "Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts Are Painful" is a pretty good read. I initially tried to submit it, but it was autokilled it seems. Link: http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html

jrockway 17y ago
I didn't realize I was clicking through to Xah's page, but I knew I was there after only a few paragraphs. I think he uses emacs as if it were MS Word or Notepad, and customizes his emacs accordingly. That's fine for him, but there is value in the generally-accepted defaults to other people. Control is not hard to type on a good keyboard. C-n, C-p, C-b, and C-f are "unconventional", but very easy to type and get used to. I must hit each combination hundreds of times a day, and my fingers never hurt. (Because of that, anyway; the only time my fingers hurt is when I have to type a lot of keys on the right pinky, ()+|`~=;':"?/ on my keyboard. I have not found a good solution to this problem yet, but it is certainly not specific to emacs.)
- Xichekolas 17y ago
  Regarding the symbols, I have been playing with Programmer Dvorak lately. It swaps the position of the symbols and numbers, such that you hit shift for the numbers and get the symbols without shift. It also moves commonly used programming symbols around so you use the first three fingers more, and avoid the pinky. You could do something similar without using dvorak of course. Link to layout: http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/ http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/
- Periodic 17y ago
  After using a sun console once with the ctrl and capslock keys swapped, I do it on every computer. I use capslock much less frequently than I use control, so it makes sense for me to put it in a fairly neutral left-pinky position. I end up pushing alt/super with my thumb most of the time, and now my left pinky no longer gets sore after long days.
ajross 17y ago
It's good history (the picture of the Symbolics keyboard is worth it all by itself), but very poor analysis, I think. The stuff about the cursor motion keys is just plain wrong. For a keyboard that has ctrl mapped to the left of A (i.e. "swap with caps lock"), C-{F,B,N,P} is much easier to type than moving one's hand off the home row and over to the arrow keys. I honestly don't know what the author was thinking here, and I strongly suspect that he doesn't actually use Emacs for much in practice. Some of the criticism is valid, like the lack of C-Shift-[a-z] bindings, and the continued use of weird archaic stuff on easy-to-type bindings. Which is fine. Certainly every serious user is going to have their own tastes and preferred bindings {+}. But trying to generalize from a few nits to say that "Emacs Keyboard Shortcuts are Painful" is very much making a mountain out of a molehill. {+} For myself, I like M-i for overwrite-mode, so I don't have to get to the Insert key, and M-g for goto-line, which is an xemacs binding I got used to years ago).

jrockway 17y ago

I didn't realize I was clicking through to Xah's page, but I knew I was there after only a few paragraphs. I think he uses emacs as if it were MS Word or Notepad, and customizes his emacs accordingly. That's fine for him, but there is value in the generally-accepted defaults to other people. Control is not hard to type on a good keyboard. C-n, C-p, C-b, and C-f are "unconventional", but very easy to type and get used to. I must hit each combination hundreds of times a day, and my fingers never hurt. (Because of that, anyway; the only time my fingers hurt is when I have to type a lot of keys on the right pinky, ()+|`~=;':"?/ on my keyboard. I have not found a good solution to this problem yet, but it is certainly not specific to emacs.)

Xichekolas 17y ago
Regarding the symbols, I have been playing with Programmer Dvorak lately. It swaps the position of the symbols and numbers, such that you hit shift for the numbers and get the symbols without shift. It also moves commonly used programming symbols around so you use the first three fingers more, and avoid the pinky. You could do something similar without using dvorak of course. Link to layout: http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/ http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/
Periodic 17y ago
After using a sun console once with the ctrl and capslock keys swapped, I do it on every computer. I use capslock much less frequently than I use control, so it makes sense for me to put it in a fairly neutral left-pinky position. I end up pushing alt/super with my thumb most of the time, and now my left pinky no longer gets sore after long days.

ajross 17y ago

It's good history (the picture of the Symbolics keyboard is worth it all by itself), but very poor analysis, I think. The stuff about the cursor motion keys is just plain wrong. For a keyboard that has ctrl mapped to the left of A (i.e. "swap with caps lock"), C-{F,B,N,P} is much easier to type than moving one's hand off the home row and over to the arrow keys. I honestly don't know what the author was thinking here, and I strongly suspect that he doesn't actually use Emacs for much in practice. Some of the criticism is valid, like the lack of C-Shift-[a-z] bindings, and the continued use of weird archaic stuff on easy-to-type bindings. Which is fine. Certainly every serious user is going to have their own tastes and preferred bindings {+}. But trying to generalize from a few nits to say that "Emacs Keyboard Shortcuts are Painful" is very much making a mountain out of a molehill. {+} For myself, I like M-i for overwrite-mode, so I don't have to get to the Insert key, and M-g for goto-line, which is an xemacs binding I got used to years ago).