Re: C-f, C-b, C-n and C-p or right, left, down, up?

["Daniel B." <dsb@smart.net>]

David Kastrup wrote:
> 
> brakjoller@hotmail.com (Barman Brakjoller) writes:
> 
> ...
> 
> The contortions one has to go through in order to switch from one
> direction of movement to another make this quite unergonomic, 

Only if you switch frequently from the convenient (on-keyboard control
characters) to the farther-away arrows keys.

Or were you talking about up vs. down, left vs. right, etc.?

If you think there's a contortion between control-b and control-f (back
and forward (left and right)), see below. 

If you think there's a contortion between control-n and control-p (next
and previous (down and up)), then what's going on with you?


> and you
> have the control key locking down another finger at the same time.

Have you experienced the control key in its correct location (not where
IBM-PC-style keyboards put control keys)?  That will make a big 
difference.

Typing Control-A is supposed to be as easy as putting your left little 
(leftmost) finger to the left of the A key and putting your left ring 
(second leftmost) finger on the A key.


> ...
> 
> Contrast that to vi, where the keyboard bindings for movement are
> simply _the_ thing to use.

What you mean by _the_ thing to use?  

Modern version of vi accept arrow keys as well as traditional vi movement 
keys, don't they?

And what contrast is there?  Emacs takes main-keyboard keystrokes as
well as arrow keys, and so does vi now.



> Is it mere coincidence that several major Emacs programmers (RMS, Ben
> Wing) have been hampered by RSI over long times?

I'd say so.



Daniel
-- 
Daniel Barclay
dsb@smart.net