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

[Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com>]

On 5/26/2012 9:45 AM, Xah Lee wrote:
> On May 26, 8:57 am, Dan Espen <des...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> Perhaps you should read more carefully.
>>
>> Thad remapped Caps Lock to ANOTHER Ctrl.
>> He didn't SWAP anything.
> 
> that doesn't matter. Those who use capslock for Ctrl basically only
> use that single key for Ctrl.

And?  Given how ubiquitous a control key is within Emacs, it should
be easy to type, not requiring one to bend one's finger down to where
a [Ctrl] key is located beneath the left shift key on PC keyboards.

When I started using computers in the early 1960s, we had to use cards.

Circa 1965 I was using a TTY33ASR and it's control key was to the left
of [A].  Several editors I was using back then (10 years before Emacs
existed) used the control key extensively to that the editor was truly
a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).

My next keyboard/terminal was a Datapoint 3300 which was essentially
a "glass teletype" with the exact same keyboard layout at the TTY33ASR
with the [Ctrl] to the left of [A].  That Datapoint 3300 was followed
by a Datamedia DT80 (a VT100 clone) whose [Ctrl] was also to the left
of [A].

All the AT&T and Sun computers I owned and used since then have had the
[Ctrl] to the left of [A] and all keyboards since then I've mapped the
[Caps Lock] to be another control key.

I've been using Emacs since 1975 (getting my first copy from the Pentagon,
a customer of mine at the time) and subsequent copies from MIT and RMS
including this copy of the Emacs manual that RMS handed me which is the
oldest one I found in my archives and I scanned years ago:

    <http://thadlabs.com/FILES/Emacs-150_1980.09.05.pdf>

I don't know what (apparent) misshapen hand you have, but having the
[Ctrl] to the left of [A] is comfortable and "natural" to me since
control characters are ubiquitous within Emacs and Bash.


> [...]
> if you consider Capslock key useless, you can given it another
> function.

Precisely.  Making the [Caps Lock] another [Ctrl] makes perfect
sense for anyone using Emacs and/or Bash.