From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Xah Lee Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: how to change C-x prefix to C-k in a clean way? Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:07:33 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <44a810f9-c399-4dec-ba5a-41e67b0c42ec@c18g2000prh.googlegroups.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1237533603 31282 80.91.229.12 (20 Mar 2009 07:20:03 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:20:03 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Mar 20 08:21:19 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1LkZ2a-0001pr-Gi for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:21:17 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:59041 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1LkZ1D-0008Eo-Vz for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 20 Mar 2009 03:19:51 -0400 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!c18g2000prh.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 88 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.6.175.142 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1237522054 8080 127.0.0.1 (20 Mar 2009 04:07:34 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:07:34 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: c18g2000prh.googlegroups.com; posting-host=24.6.175.142; posting-account=bRPKjQoAAACxZsR8_VPXCX27T2YcsyMA User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_4_11; en) AppleWebKit/525.27.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.2.1 Safari/525.27.1, gzip(gfe), gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: news.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:167820 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 03:19:29 -0400 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:63115 Archived-At: On Mar 16, 6:17=C2=A0am, rustom wrote: > > Your modest proposal is brilliant in some as yet to be specified way. > > The only problem I see with it is if it has to be read aloud. For > > example, nxf e dsx bc bee if read out loud should probably be spelled > > out in full. > > Well in normal English we are used to ough having 10s of > pronunciations seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(combination) > > > So, since so much time and space is saved by abbreviating > > words, there will be a concomitant opportunity to actually expand the > > individual letters, as in areeeayeellellwye > > essdoubleyoueeayeteeeyeengee! > Heh Heh! > > The only thing I am not sure of is whether > > that 26^10 (~141 trillion)is even close to being equal to c(26,1) + > > C(26,2)+ .... C(26,10). But it doesn't matter. The few hundred key > > combos in the repertoir of even the most accomplished power user is a > > tiny fraction of those potentially available by combining modifiers > > (Shift, Control, Meta, Alt, Super, Hyper) with the other fifty-some key= s > > within easy reach. For instance, I just queried the binding of C-H-M-s-= ^ > > and found that it was undefined. Surprise, surprise. > > I dont get this point. =C2=A0Running English uses no C/Meta/Alt/Super/Hyp= er > and their use is hardly claimed to be very efficient for typing. =C2=A0(v= i > may be less general/customizable etc but is more ergonomic than emacs) > And as someone said (is it Xah?) typing perl is not at all correlated > to typing English > > > > > Still Xah is right about Dvorak. It's about 10% faster and 30% less > > taxing. (Numbers grabbed out of the air that seem about right.) > > My specific (personal) problem is this: > It is certain that the amortized benefit of learning dvorak will beat > qwerty and keyscript correspondingly improves over dvorak. > > But to reap that amortized benefit one needs to assume an infinite > life to offset the time (and essdoubleyoueeayetee =C2=A0!) Hi Rustom, Some sort of shorthand writing can indeed improve one's typing of natural language by a lot. I haven't studied any particular shorthand system, my impression is that there are quite a few. ( indeed, Wikipedia lists about 40.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Shorthand ) shorthand systems are designed for professional dictation clerk or similar. Shorthand system has little offer specific to emacs for improving speed of writing natural lang or programing. (abbrev system and templates (e.g. yasnippet) are much more useful) also, there are several chording systems or chording keyboards over the past decades. In general, they are not practical. Some of them are envisioned to replace the standard keyboard, but they have their own problems. The first adoption problem is that chording system requires learning to use, while keyboard doesn't. For vast majority of computer users, hunt & peck works well because they don't have a need to type much. Note that Wikipedia also has a few articles on the various chording keyboards.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Chorded_keyboard from a research point of view, one could imagine a input device that's radical and so well designed, so that it takes ergonomics from the ground up, where the hardware naturally fits the shape and movement of human hand, and uses perhaps chording chord chording. And perhaps comes with a fancy integrated pointing device. And perhaps uses a software layout (of the chording) based on a shorthand systems, and for various programing languages too... often, radical general solution as innovation without a immediate, concrete, specific problem it solves, is not likely to become adopted anytime soon. (PS thanks Rustom for the email notice. Sorry for the delay in replying. Also, thanks Alan Mackenzie et al. I haven't yet studied your advices in detail. ) Xah =E2=88=91http://xahlee.org/ =E2=98=84