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: What's your favourite *under_publicized* editing feature ofEmacs? Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 08:43:02 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <842d10e8-4efb-447a-b863-09d81105d7a1@a8g2000pri.googlegroups.com> References: <1578157c-17a0-41ea-9420-9330f68b10fe@glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com> <02a0d2ef-0b00-4038-b559-690516b4ed0a@a21g2000prj.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1298569600 26600 80.91.229.12 (24 Feb 2011 17:46:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:46:40 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Feb 24 18:46:36 2011 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 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PsfGq-0000gi-2o for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 24 Feb 2011 18:46:36 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:38946 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PsfGk-00037B-QB for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 24 Feb 2011 12:46:26 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!a8g2000pri.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs,comp.lang.lisp Original-Lines: 104 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 76.126.112.84 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1298565782 26850 127.0.0.1 (24 Feb 2011 16:43:02 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:43:02 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: a8g2000pri.googlegroups.com; posting-host=76.126.112.84; posting-account=bRPKjQoAAACxZsR8_VPXCX27T2YcsyMA User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.98 Safari/534.13, gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:185279 comp.emacs:101112 comp.lang.lisp:299906 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:79436 Archived-At: 2011-02-24 On Feb 24, 6:43=C2=A0am, fortunatus wrote: > On Feb 23, 12:15=C2=A0pm, Rafe Kettler wrote: > > > You must be a Windows user. You must also not be an Emacs power user, > > because you think it's acceptable to use the arrow keys as cursors. If > > you don't, please use C-b, C-f, C-p, and C-n in place of the arrow > > keys. It dramatically improves speed. > > Don't go down that path: "vi" has a way-better key binding for cursor > movement!! it should be noted, that vi's jkl; is not optimal. Better is ijkl in inverted T shape. also, note that vi's Esc is FAST route to RSI. See: =E3=80=88Left Wrist side-to-side Motion Pain; vi Esc key Syndrome=E3=80=89 http://xahlee.org/emacs/vi_esc_syndrome.html also note, emacs keys and vi keys, are not out of much conscious design. Like unix tool bags, they are piled on over the years without much thinking. It was good enough, at the time. In fact, most things in life are like that. They are not anywhere close to optimal in any sense. The following is a quote from Daniel Weinreb (danweinreb.org) , 2008-06-01, on comp.emacs newsgroup. Source. That's true. At the time Guy Steele put together the Emacs default key mappings, many people in the target user community (about 20 people at MIT!) were already using these key bindings. It would have been hard to get the new Emacs bindings accepted by the community if they differed for such basic commands. As you point out, anyone using Emacs can very easily change this based on their own ergonomic preferences. See: =E3=80=88Keyboard Hardware's Influence on Keyboard Shortcut Design (How Ema= cs and vi keys came to be)=E3=80=89 http://xahlee.org/emacs/keyboard_hardware_and_key_choices.html =E3=80=88Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts Are Painful=E3=80=89 http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html This =E2=80=9Cdesign=E2=80=9D by evolution applies to Keyboard hardware its= elf. As it is, it's the worst shit possible. It was good enough in the 1970s, where there are just a handful of programers in the world. And today, but vast majority of people (mom & pop, who occasionally chat online or write email), it's good enough! Even for most programers, who's finger actually dance on keyboard perhaps no more than accumulated 3 hours a day, it's good enough! But for data entry clerks, or programers who seriously type a lot or write docs all day, it's hello RSI. That's why we have so many problems on keybinding debates, radical input device designs, dvorak advocacy, and RSI is a serious medical problem. See: =E3=80=88Keyboard Hardware Design Flaws=E3=80=89 http://xahlee.org/emacs/keyboard_problems.html this also applies to key layouts. e.g. we all know the story of qwerty and dvorak. But in my study, i found that it's just not that. Most international layout are ergonomic garbage. See: =E3=80=88Idiocy of Keyboard Layouts: QWERTZ, AZERTY, Alt Graph=E3=80=89 http://xahlee.org/kbd/keyboard_layouts.html =E3=80=88Dvorak, Maltron, Colemak, NEO, B=C3=A9po, Turkish-F, Keyboard Layo= uts Fight!=E3=80=89 http://xahlee.org/kbd/dvorak_and_all_keyboard_layouts.html also note, in the programing industry, if there is one software that induces most cases of RSI, it is emacs, by far. See: =E3=80=88Celebrity Programers with RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury)=E3=80=89 http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_hand_pain_celebrity.html the emacs's keybinding, in my assessment, of all possible keybinding systems one could devise, with the PC keyboard as given constraint, i rate it near the bottom. Better than random assignment, but not much. One thing damaging is that GNU Emacs has a tendency to refuse change, much like most unix-bag. Emacs's keybinding today is pretty much identical to emacs of 1970s. But, the landscape of computing has changed tremendously in past 30 years. why most emacs people don't see this but in fact advocates emacs keybinding? My guess is that most people have not studied the issue. There are tens of thousands of things in life, we learned and use daily by habit, but never thought about it seriously. If you are interested, i think if you actually start to study keybinding, say, in the next 30 days, your job is to research keybinding design 8 hours a day for 30 days, i think you'll have a changed view. (no, i don't mean to brag about how many hundreds of software you've used in past n decades. Me too bro. I mean: stop dead and spend 8 hours a day for the next 30 days to do nothing but study keybindings. Yours truely have done so.) Xah =E2=88=91 http://xahlee.org/