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On Aug 4, 5:22 pm, Joe Fineman <jo...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> When I started using Emacs, in 1986, on a Sun 3, I decided that even
> C- keys were silly. After all, C-x & C-h are prefixes, ESC is a
> prefix equivalent to M-, so why not make a clean sweep? I wrote
> enough keybindings to make one of the f keys a prefix key equivalent
> to C-, and defined f keys equivalent to all the other prefixes. They
> were all in a cluster on the left on that keyboard. (As for the
> mouse, I thought of that as something for emergencies only.) I kept
> up that attitude thru a variety of computers & keyboards, but the
> advent of the Web forced me to use the mouse for some things.
>
> Last year, however, I happened on the Kinesis keyboard, which, tho
> exorbitantly expensive, puts both C- & M- (Alt) handy to both thumbs.
> That caused me to go back to the original Emacs design, with shifted
> keys. Indeed, I have gone the other way & made (e.g.) M-8 equivalent
> to C-x 8. Now, Stallman's original vision is implemented without
> acrobatics.
Here's something Daniel Weinreb wrote about how emacs shortcuts came
to be.
Xah wrote:
«Emacs's default cursor moving shortcuts are “Ctrl+f”, “Ctrl+b”,
“Ctrl
+n”, “Ctrl+p”. The keys f, b, n, p are scattered around the
keyboard
and are not under the home row.»
Daniel wrote:
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.
Source: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/msg/0342e0bc1aa05c0d
See also:
Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts Are Painful
xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html">http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html
Xah
∑ xahlee.org/">http://xahlee.org/
☄
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