From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Rustom Mody Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: how to change C-x prefix to C-k in a clean way? Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:10:14 +0530 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1236865810 26917 80.91.229.12 (12 Mar 2009 13:50:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:50:10 +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 Mar 12 14:51:24 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 1LhlHc-0005MR-8m for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:49:12 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:37244 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1LhlGG-0000dq-CV for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:47:48 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Lhl95-0005pT-63 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:40:23 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Lhl90-0005n6-P8 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:40:19 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=48992 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Lhl90-0005mo-7D for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:40:18 -0400 Original-Received: from yw-out-1718.google.com ([74.125.46.154]:33511) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Lhl8y-000841-KH for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:40:16 -0400 Original-Received: by yw-out-1718.google.com with SMTP id 6so688018ywa.66 for ; Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:40:15 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:date:message-id:subject :from:to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=xACK3uVGQjZY8cve0d6a1b8NsoSZRNxcRVCRtHsCdB4=; b=vEEZRiYckW+a/smBNTyxZ0LXkd5xAvNzJMx8JdmKF7dyBc6LwcF0LHjSc1gz0egAK+ idIQaI9xBmqqU7Vn8kv/1EYLS2o2GTwj/snuzmWn48wOCimEKI+tqvTse68/ZDRzjhBZ HhCuC0sI8KWbE8IveSKoKth5xQh4uW+WYp3m4= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; b=ubFimdW8sLnAxl0N9G3KVKO/DxJG3yFIR6J/3H+3DE5xxZwGeUMS8YPXGedjHQG8/I Z1FdXy/jwnHzVHQVhI8izTgFXuDKOjR53mN8WMoTnUIDH8uVHMjaFEJCNqEfqPov6L1k muAE0NzGfLRMp7UzBcypyrLe4L7UNE+KbgFCU= Original-Received: by 10.142.103.11 with SMTP id a11mr4302699wfc.208.1236865214707; Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:40:14 -0700 (PDT) X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 2) 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:62851 Archived-At: > i learned dvorak in 1992 or 1993. More or less due to my > nerdiness towards better design. I don't have typing speed > problem nor RSI in anyway. I guess anyone using/working with/working on emacs has to be almost by definition a productivity-junkie starting with rms, going on to the fancy modes for programming and sysad support of the last couple of decades and today's hot stuff like org, icicles etc. I toyed with the idea of trying dvorak for a while but then somehow came to the conclusion that it does not go far enough. You see dvorak was invented in the age of mechanical typewriters which had two fundamental assumptions (or invariants in programmerese) 1. The typist can type only 1 key at a time 2. One (key)stroke generates exactly 1 letter Obviously neither of these is a necessary assumption today though both are universally assumed. Well 1. has the exceptions like Ctrl/Alt/Shift but these are very minor exceptions if you compare them with the possibilities of full-scale chording which you may appreciate as a pianist! A simplistic estimate of this being: 10 fingers -> 26 letters means (partial) functions from a 10 element set to a 26 element set, which is 27 raised to 10 (thats a number in trillions!) This is way more chords than any reasonable sized dictionary and hence every word could be in principle 1 single chord, ie keystroke. Even if this set is pruned many billions of times for eliminating inconvenient/impossible chords. Nevertheless the hundred most frequent words of English ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_common_words_in_English ) could easily be assigned one unique chord and that would mean 1-stroke 1-word (strangely comes back to Chinese by a back door). Ive not gone into this more because even simple keyboard hackery like flipping Ctrl and CapsLock causes so many problems in practice that full scale converting of a qwerty keyboard into a 'piano' is a little technically daunting. So let me go on to point 2 which (I hope!) is more feasible and productive -- in a word abbrevs. Evidently even adding a few dozen abrevs for the most commonly used words that we use in some context would significantly reduce typing. But trying to explore this further Ive started studying the alphabetic shorthand called keyscript [ http://www.freewebs.com/cassyjanek ] It has a whole system of shorthanding English into ASCII with some fair amount of 'logic'. Here is a taste (though not the logic) : One letter abbrevs for the most common words b = but c = with d = had e = this f = of g = that h = the j = which n = and ...etc etc upto z = was then common phrases able to = cb had been = dn do not = dx did not = ex does not = dsx etc and a few dozen other abbrevs like become = bc better = bee before = bf being = bg below = bl consequences = csqa unfortunately = nxf same = sa said = sd such = sc statement = ztx sufficient = sfj > The significantly noticeable thing is the comfort. I didn't realize > it until in late 1990s, when sometimes i had to go back to qwerty > as a sys admin, and the first thing to note is that the fingers > jump wildly. I am sure you can see that the 'wild jumping' you describe as reducing from QWERTY to dvorak would reduce very significantly with such a system -- dont you think? The only problem is that -- as a confirmed productivity junkie -- I realise that working very hard to become more productive is a surefire way of doing no real work!! Ive spent about 3 weeks on this and I am really sweating!