Re: Yet another discussion on improving the first time user experience

["Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com>]

Xue Fuqiao <xfq.free@gmail.com> writes:

> On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 10:04 PM, Pascal J. Bourguignon
> <pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:
>> What I mean is that perhaps concentrating on keys is the wrong thing to
>> do, vs. concentrating on bindings and the fact that you can configure
>> them as you want, and that the default bindings (foremost the oldest of
>> them) are quite _optimized_.
>
> But they are hard to press.  In the Space-cadet keyboard[fn:1], one of
> the early Lisp Machine keyboards, Ctrl key besides the space bar
> (similar to the position of Alt keys on PC keyboards), and Meta to the
> left of Ctrl.  So, the Ctrl key is easier to press than Meta.  This is
> why, the key bindings for the most used commands in Emacs involve the
> Ctrl key instead of the Meta key, I think.  But Ctrl is not easy to
> press now.  Yes, we can move the Ctrl key[fn:2], but many new users
> don't know that.

That's the problem.  Let's solve it, put that in your .xmodmap:

!------------------------------------------------------------
! Sixth line
!------------------------------------------------------------

keycode  37 = Super_L       
keycode 133 = Meta_L
keycode  64 = Control_L
keycode  65 = space         space       digitspace          digitspace
keycode 108 = Control_R
keycode 134 = Meta_R
keycode 135 = Super_R
keycode 105 = Hyper_R



> And some commands that are frequently used, such as {open, save, close
> buffer}, all require multiple keystrokes with the difficult Ctrl key.
>
> Footnotes:
>
> [fn:1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Space-cadet.jpg
>
> [fn:2] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MovingTheCtrlKey

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com/