Re: Menu suggestion

[Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> The Emacs cursor motion keys are essential to efficient editing.
> People who use the arrow keys will never get good at it.

I am eager to achieve maximum efficiency in Emacs editing,
but I don't see how an asymmetrical layout of C-f C-b C-n C-p
C-a C-e C-v M-v is better for cursor motion than logically placed
arrow keys:

home  up  pgup
left      right
 end down pgdn

And typing arrow keys is faster because they require less key presses.

One possible argument for using letters as cursor motion keys is that
they have different modifiers (C-f M-f C-M-f), but arrow keys have
the same modifiers as well: right, M-right and C-M-right.

Oops, I noticed now that Emacs has no corresponding bindings yet for
C-M- modifiers of arrow keys!  They could be added to bindings.el:

(define-key global-map [(control meta left)]  'backward-sexp)
(define-key global-map [(control meta right)] 'forward-sexp)
(define-key global-map [(control meta up)]    'backward-list)
(define-key global-map [(control meta down)]  'forward-list)
(define-key global-map [(control meta home)]  'beginning-of-defun)
(define-key global-map [(control meta end)]   'end-of-defun)

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/