Re: a key system to replace gnu emacs's 1000 default keybindings

[Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com>]

Xah wrote:
> > the best i can think of are:
>
> > μTron ($570)
> > http://xahlee.org/kbd/uTRON_keyboard.html
>
> > “Truly Ergonomic” ($200)
> > http://xahlee.org/kbd/Truly_Ergonomic_keyboard.html
>
> > Kinesis (≈$250)
> > http://xahlee.org/emacs/keyboard_Kinesis.html
>
> > my analysis of their design, for my personal taste, starting with
> > best, are: μTron, TE, Kinesis.
>
> > What's your fav?
>

> I don't have any. I need someone from geekhack to make me one based
> loosely on the symbolics space cadet.

people who have attachment to lisp machine keyboards are vintage
lovers. They love the qualities associated with vintage, history, not
functional fitness. Like, some people love cars from 1950s, spend
millions to buy them, even though functionally they are worse than
cheap cars made today. Likewise, functionally speaking, the lisp
machine keyboards are functionally inferior to $10 brandless PC
keyboard, even for the purpose of coding lisp in emacs.

i heard that you can still buy one, btw.

〈Space-cadet Keyboard and Other Lisp Keyboards〉
http://xahlee.org/kbd/lisp_keyboards.html

> The Kinesis Advantage seems to
> have the most impressive videoclips of speed typing but theres too much
> unused real estate on it for my tastes. Does anyone here use it and, if
> so, what have the keys been reprogrammed to?

i haven't heard of Kinesis known for speed typing. Any links?

note that Kinesis is actually smaller than standard PC keyboard,
despite the fact that it has big whitespace in the middle.


> No, I never used ergoemacs. I read a few of the articles but disagreed
> with most of them.

yes you use a keybinding for cursor movement that's in ErgoEmacs.

> I have a higher opinion of RMS's mnemonics than you
> do.

for a moment i thought you mean you like RMS's keyboarding ideas
betten than mine. Perhaps maybe that is what you meant. In anycase,
care to elaborate?

> However, the idea of getting real world statistics on emacs typing
> behavior via a keylogger is a good one.

thank you. That's the gist of ErgoEmacs.

btw, am not sure that RMS designed the basic keys for emacs.

The following is a quote from Daniel Weinreb , 2008-06-01, on
comp.emacs newsgroup. Source groups.google.com.

    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.

cited in
〈Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts are Painful〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html

 Xah