Re: How to type when using Emacs?

[don provan <dprovan@comcast.net>]

Xah <xahlee@gmail.com> writes:

> Turning the Cap Lock key into the Control key is one of the bad advice
> in keyboarding. It's one of the myth that perpetuate bad practice.

I think this comment is based on limited experience with keyboards.
I've found that most modern keyboards are, in fact, OK as is, and I
suppose in that sense this is a "myth" because people think it applies
to standard Windows keyboards. Certainly on a standard keyboard,
making caps lock control is just silly, putting control exactly where
you don't want it, as Xah says. (On the other hand, if you do this
while leaving control as control, it amounts to simply disabling caps
lock, which is, of course, a good thing but has nothing to do with
where control is.)

But there are some keyboards (I once had one that came with a Sun
workstation) that are simply miserable in the placement of control and
caps lock, simultaneously making it hard to hit control and way, *way*
too easy to accidentally hit caps lock. (As I recall, the placement
had all the flaws Xah sees in what would happen if you did swapped
them on a standard windows keyboard, plus a couple others.) If you add
to that the fact that the layout was different in ways that were just
obnoxious compared to the standard windows layout, and there really
was no way to remain sane without swapping those keys.

-don

p.s. Let me second the warning about Xah to newbies. I find that
although his observations can be quite illuminating, his conclusions
often strike me as raucuously incorrect. But judge for yourself.