Chris Jones wrote:
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 11:49:34AM EDT, Barclay, Daniel wrote:
>> Chris Jones wrote:
>>> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 12:04:44PM EDT, Barclay, Daniel wrote:
>>>> Chris Jones wrote:
>>> [..]
>>>
>>> ... homo sapiens ... opposable thumb.
...
> The indirect relationship is that thumbs are both very flexible and
> underused in keyboarding.
Yes.
...
>> ... you seemed to find Emacs' modifier keys inconvenient.
>
> That I don't know.. what I _do_ know is that it took me months to
> assimilate a minimal subset of vim keyboard actions to the point where
> anything I want to do is done before I have a chance to start thinking,
> now how do I do this.. and when I look at emacs tutorials, it looks like
> I would need quite some time to unlearn my vim habits and acquire emacs
> ones ...
Yes, to be proficient will probably take a while.
> that might prove to be unsuitable from an ergonomic standpoint and
Well, I don't know how the ergnomics would work for you, but for
me long-term use of Emacs (with the control in its pre-PC traditional
position, of course) hasn't caused any hand RSI problems.
> would therefore require that I start remapping - which is absolute hell...
Yep, although in composing e-mail messages in Mozilla Seamonkey's
mail composition editor, which doesn't use Emacs or vi bindings (oh
for Netscape 4.7, which did use Emacs/Bash bindings!), I don't get
confused often. Of course, that's not equivalent to your potential
vi-vs.-Emacs case (since Seamonkey has many fewer editing key
bindings).
>> How hard is it to put your left pinky on the key immediately to the
>> left of the A key and then put your left ring finger on the A key?
>> That leaves those fingers right next to each other.
>
> Yes, that is quite feasible, although hitting the A key with the ring
> finger is also known as blasphemy.
Well, if you use Emacs, you just don't let a typing teacher see you.
Or you tell him or her that you're in some typing mode other than
standarding typing mode.
>> Or was your comment not implying that it was hard but just reacting
>> to its difference from proper (per typing class) fingering?
>
> Well, that's basically the issue. Since typing tutorials say nothing of
> the Control and Alt keys,
Do they address computer typing (with modifier keys other that the
shift keys)? (My last typing classes were 30 years ago, so of source
they only dealt with plain typewriters.)
> ... I felt that I had to be creative and that's
> where I realized that "curling" each thumb to reach them was not only
> much easier than doing it via my pinkies (even with the left Control key
> remapped to CapsLock) but also provided a mechanism that was consistent
> across both hands.
>
> My curling ability only extends about two keys-widths to the left of
> right of the keyboard comfortably, so I had to remap the Winkeys to
> Control.
Well, you definitely want to do at least that. Trying to use Emacs
with the Control keys in the default PC-style position is essentially
impossible.
>> Hmm. I think I have "Emacs control-key mode" vs. "regular mode."
>>
>> I notice that I shift my left hand left a bit (to put my pinky on
>> the left-of-A control key) and widen my fingers (some fingers stay
>> in their normal columns (e.g., index finger for F key)).
>
> Pretty much what I'm trying to avoid.
>
>> Note that I don't typically shift to control-key mode for just a
>> single command (one control-key sequence).
>
> Not sure what you mean.
When I shift my left hand left for "control-key mode," I'm not
usually doing that for just a single control key; that is, the
it's not one pair of hand shifts for a single control key, it's
usually a pair of hand shifts amortized over several control
key hits (those in the next paragraph).
>
>> More typically, I shift my hand left for "move-around and cut/copy-
>> and-paste mode" (e.g, C-a, C-e, C-p, C-n, C-w, C-y, etc.) and
>> then shift back to normal touch-typing position for "typing words"
>> mode.
>
> Is this in bash..? vim..? emacs..?
Emacs. Those are some common movement and cutting/pasting key
combinations. (Bash is somewhat similar.)
...
> Ctrl-h in vim that "back deletes" one character is a good example of
> this. Unless you absolutely need to have something engraved on the key
> that describes its behavior, I clearly find it preferable to the
> "Backspace" key, which is a lot harder to reach.
Yes, C-h in Emacs should perform some kind of backspace operation
(back-deletion or at least movement), since C-h in ASCII is the
Backspace character.
I still Stallman went a little bit too "mnemonic" in some of the
control-key choices (e.g., using C-h (the Backspace character) for
"help" instead of using it for backspacing/deleting).
...
>> Well, actually, C-z isn't that frequent.
>
> That's no excuse.. in any case, background a process..? precious.
What do you mean? Emacs copied C-z's assignment from the shell, so
any key-choice problem isn't Emacs' fault.
> Thanks for your interest.
Roger.
Daniel
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