Editing
Again tonite I find myself trolling various Emacs and Vi(m) sites. I was struck a bit by something I saw over and over…namely that Vi(m) has a steep learning curve because it’s modal. I don’t think I find that to be true. Is it just me or is modality more intuitive? I think it makes a lot of sense. Of course it made a lot more sense when the ESC key was closer to home row, but since I almost exclusively use a laptop keyboard, ESC is easily touchable without moving my hands. What say you?
Well, first off, use xmodmap to make Caps Lock your ESC key for Vim’ing.
Second, Emacs has modality, anyone stuck invoking a command and needing CTRL-g to get out knows that. Granted, emacs has less modality than vi, but I think people overemphasize the modality argument.
Everybody knows that you remap the capslock to a control, not escape!
Geez!
Right…. Do you touchtype? With left pinkie on CapsLock, you should use the right hand for the prefix character. So what prefix character do you use?
gar! something is happening to my comment!
I do touch type. I don’t know what you mean by “prefix character”.
I used sun keyboards during, say, the first 5 years of my post-college employment. I was thrilled when I found that the original IBM PC/XT and /AT keyboards had the control key in the correct place. In addition to which, the gnome UI provides the ability to remap the capslock in this way, but not the way you’ve suggested.
I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense; I just don’t use vi enough to know that it does. I do use emacs extensively, though, and the remapping that “everybody knows” does make sense. (Though, some people — see comments on the first link — think the control key should go under the thumb.)
(meant to say: I used sun keyboards throughout college, too.)
Default emacs uses CTRL-x as the prefix character. Not using the right pinkie for CTRL means chording a CapsLock+x which feels weird to me (I can’t keep my fingers on home row while doing that).
I figure using CapsLock+k would be a good prefix character for touch typists (little disturbance off home row and typing demand split between hands).
I think I am against anything that uses ‘k’. As that is kill for most things. C-x k (kill buffer) C-k (Kill line forward). But I get the drift.
C-x k could become C-k k. Kill line forward doesn’t work anyway; last I used emacs I changed it to delete-line, which could be C-k C-k.
I think of the prefix character as a modal switch (like Esc in vi), you hit it and then you type commands, so it doesn’t really matter what key you use, other than it types fast.
I taught myself touch typing in junior high, so maybe I”ve developed my own style?
In any case, for C-x, my pinky is on the capslock and my index finger hits the x key. Otherwise, when typing (like I just did on that “x” back there), I use my ring finger as normal. When the prefix is C-c, I do pretty much the same thing.
Patrick, which version of emacs are you using? As surprising as this is to me, 22 has some usability features that I like. And kill line forward works there. I can’t speak to older versions.
I used 21, the kill-forward sucked usage-wise (I’m used to ‘dd’ in vi), so I just bound C-k to delete the line instead of from the cursor to the right.
Gotcha