Re: Emacs keyboard

[James Freer <jessejazza3.uk@gmail.com>]

On Sun, 6 Jan 2013, ken wrote:

> On 01/05/2013 04:05 AM James Freer wrote:
>> On Fri, 4 Jan 2013, Loic J. Duros wrote:
>> 
>>> dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:
>>> 
>>>> Sun (er, oracle) makes that type of keyboard, but
>>>> also makes one with the control key immediately left
>>>> of the "A" key, where it was on the original
>>>> teletype-like machine (name escapes me now, but it
>>>> ended in "33").
>>> 
>>> What's the difference with moving the ctrl key to the caps lock key on a
>>> standard keyboard?
>>> http://emacswiki.org/emacs/MovingTheCtrlKey
>> 
>> It's not a big difference... just preference - less far to stretch the
>> fingers. Capslock always used to be the location of the ctrl key on
>> early keyboards which happened to suit those that use the wordstar
>> keybindings (which are the most efficient in professional writers
>> opinion... and mine). A lot of emacs users like them swapped for emacs
>> bindings. Although i've got used to using the right ctrl key for
>> wordstar mode.
>> 
>> james
>
> Amen (or +1 if you prefer) on both counts.  Having learned to type on an 
> actual typewriter and having started into computers with those old teletype 
> machines, and then into PCs with DOS 1.0, I appreciate being able to have the 
> Ctrl next to the 'A' key.  That's where it was on the first PCs and where it 
> stayed until, perhaps just coincidentally but perhaps not coincidentally, 
> Microsoft came out with Word.  At the time Wordstar was the top editor.  But 
> because using Wordstar entailed using the Ctrl key a lot, moving it to the 
> keyboard's hinterlands made it difficult to use and it thereby lost a lot of 
> market share to Word. Isn't it wonderful how a market economy can even 
> rearrange your keyboard?
>
> The second Amen/+1 goes to Wordstar keybindings.  Somebody put a whole lot of 
> thought into them and made them the most intuitive of any editor of that time 
> and since.  You could easily learn how to move around all around in a file 
> you were editing in under an hour and then remember all of the keybindings 
> the next day.  Most all the Wordstar keybindings for navigation were also 
> language-independent; that is, you didn't have to know English for them to 
> make sense and so be easily memorable.  If I was just starting out in 
> computing and wasn't already so accustomed to emacs keybindings, I'd 
> definitely go to something like joe\jstar for an editor.

Jstar when i'd discovered it was excellent for me. I started using wordstar in 
the 80s... that's how old i am! But i use an editor for text not coding... alas 
jstar doesn't have emacs "visual line mode" or softwrap as some folk call it. 
All the graphical editors seem to and so does vim with "set linebreak". Emacs 
also does 'hotch' (as i call it - i think it's called 'mid screen cursor 
positioning' or something like that) - one's typing and gets to the bottom of 
the screen... automatically it moves up half a screen - that is so useful. Not 
appreciated until you've used it. Jstar does that but it's a shame about the 
softwrap. The author is doing some development again on Joe.

Emacs does all so that's why i'll stick to it. I'd prefer a cut down version or 
being able to remove ALL the functions from the menu i don't want. The games 
and calculator... all that stuff i don't want. But i'm still learning emacs... 
quite a lot of learning! I'd love a basic word processor included... something 
that just does the basics with an rtf file for letters and memos.

james