71–80 of 84 posts
I am a die hard vim user who has been learning Clojure recently and I have learned a little Emacs along the way because everyone in the Lisp community bangs on about it. The funny thing is, every time I go to write some Clojure code - I want to open a Vim session, but I am always strangely drawn to Emacs for some reason. Recently, I decided to figure out what it was about Emacs that made me want to use it so much ove…
Isn't it possible to use a repl in VIM?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you keep stretching your pinky to the left Control key (which is used a lot in Emacs), you can actually damage your hand especially with heavy Emacs love. Mapping the Caps Lock to Control is useful because it removes the stretching and, besides, Caps Lock is used infrequently enough to not warrant its being on the home row. (It also makes Ctrl shortcuts in other applications easier.)
That makes sense if you're using Emacs on a laptop. However, when you're at your desk, the most awesome Emacs upgrade is to buy a Kinesis Ergo "Contoured" keyboard ( http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/ ). It moves all of the control/alt/Apple/Meta keys from all of the random locations to your thumbs and so once you get used to it, it's way, way better than anything else. The only downside is that it only comes in one size s…
I use to half joke that my disdain for Microsoft is not as extensive as it may appear from one reading what I post (I got a -8 mod a couple days back for saying no real programmer would accept programming under Windows). In fact, I love several Microsoft products and, for me, the three best products they do today are the natural keyboards, the mice and SQL Server. In that order.
I loved the Z-80 softcard too. Would place it above SQL Server if it were still in production.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That puts control on the home row. You'll be pressing / holding down control quite often in Emacs. (Frequently typed characters should be on the home row for efficiency. That's why Qwerty has semicolon on the home row.)
"Frequently typed characters should be on the home row for efficiency." Only if you miniscule hands and recordbreakingly narrow shoulders.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want the keyboard commands that you're used to, you can program them. That's generally a bad idea... Let me underline this sentence. Some people (particularly the ones who think that copy and paste were invented by God on the eighth day of creation) get it into their heads that they should redesign the emacs interface on their first day. This is particularly tempting because the ability to remap keys all over…
A couple reasons to not try to immediately make the keyboard shortcuts match the editor you're used to: * You'll probably overwrite some other really useful keyboard shortcuts unintentionally. C-v (Paste, on Windows) is page-down in Emacs. C-c is the prefix for mode-specific commands; C-c C-c sends email, compiles the function under the cursor, etc., depending on what file / buffer type you're working in. * Emacs has…
I've tried to start using Emacs a few times now, and I just can't get this. My keyboard already has page up/down and arrow keys that are accessible without using a modifier. Why would I want to use a two key combo when a single key will suffice? Page jumping especially is something that you're not going to be in a rush to insert text afterwards.
The other thing I don't get is the ridiculous hand-mangling you've got to do for the M-combos. (I'd already remapped caps lock to control)
I understand that many of its standard key combinations precede the keycaps and de-facto standards of today, but I'd hardly consider it a loss for the bindings to fit in better with the rest of a modern system.
I'm about to try Emacs for the third time. Are there any common sets of alternative bindings?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A swift kick to the head. After that, mapping CAPS-LOCK to be CONTROL. After that, the previously mentioned O'Reilly book.
This is the second time I've read this: > mapping CAPS-LOCK to be CONTROL. Why? At least in my laptop CAPS-LOCK is easier me to press than CONTROL if I want CAPS, maybe there is another reason for it?
What's the purpose of caps lock? If you're SHOUTING you should be HOLDING DOWN THE SHIFT KEY AS HARD AS YOU CAN SO THAT YOUR FEELING IS GENUINE!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A couple reasons to not try to immediately make the keyboard shortcuts match the editor you're used to: * You'll probably overwrite some other really useful keyboard shortcuts unintentionally. C-v (Paste, on Windows) is page-down in Emacs. C-c is the prefix for mode-specific commands; C-c C-c sends email, compiles the function under the cursor, etc., depending on what file / buffer type you're working in. * Emacs has…
> C-v (Paste, on Windows) is page-down in Emacs I've tried to start using Emacs a few times now, and I just can't get this. My keyboard already has page up/down and arrow keys that are accessible without using a modifier. Why would I want to use a two key combo when a single key will suffice? Page jumping especially is something that you're not going to be in a rush to insert text afterwards. The other thing I don't…
Under Qwerty, most of the common prefix keys (e.g. C-x, C-c, M-x) are scrunched together on the left hand. If you're also using your left hand to press Ctrl (whether on CapsLock or at the bottom left of the keyboard), you're mangling your hand. That's why there's also a right Ctrl key.
FWIW, I sometimes use Page Up/Down and the arrow keys while just reading, but tend to use the Emacs-style navigation shortcuts while actively editing. C-v never made sense to me, either; I'm guessing it's just historical.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just read Steve Yegge's "Effective Emacs", thanks for the link. It was very enlightening on many levels and told me several things that were written between the lines, namely: - Initial user experience is (very) secondary to long-term efficiency - if you aren't in this for the long term don't bother - the article actually suggestes swapping the caps lock key and the ctrl key to have it better positioned for emacs u…
Many are a fan of using the Caps Lock key as Control. While better than the insane standard positioning, it's still not optimal: it's not symmetrical between your hands (you're not going to remap Return as another Control) and it still makes for a lot of awkward pinky use. (Imagine playing a piano piece all with your 3rd, 4th and 5th fingers.) The optimal solution I've come up with is to use the two keys adjacent to…
(custom-set-variables '(mac-command-modifier (quote control)) '(mac-option-modifier (quote meta)) )
And now your command key is a control and your option key is a meta.
I am a die hard vim user who has been learning Clojure recently and I have learned a little Emacs along the way because everyone in the Lisp community bangs on about it. The funny thing is, every time I go to write some Clojure code - I want to open a Vim session, but I am always strangely drawn to Emacs for some reason. Recently, I decided to figure out what it was about Emacs that made me want to use it so much ove…
I installed Emacs to install SLIME so I could play around with Lisp. The REPL-in-a-buffer is so phenomenally powerful that I immediately missed it in TextMate when coding in Ruby. Thus began my descent into Emacs madness, and my new favorite function, ruby-send-region-and-go I was a vi guy for a very long time, and I mocked the Emacs guys for "eight megs and constantly swapping" and "Emacs claw" ... until I switched…
I get frustrated when running a shell in a regular terminal. They all implement some subset of emacs editing keystrokes, but never all of them, and the subsets are different. It's wonderful having all editing, searching, etc. functionality of emacs available when typing in your shell.
I wrote some Emacs Lisp to jump to the line of a javac syntax error, or stack trace line with a single keystroke. Combining that with the ability to run a shell and browse log files comes in very handy. I also have a macro that searches for the Java symbol under the cursor. It misses a bunch of edge cases, but still very useful. All of this in just 55 lines of elisp. How many lines does it take to write "Hello, World!" as an Eclipse plug in?
I am a die hard vim user who has been learning Clojure recently and I have learned a little Emacs along the way because everyone in the Lisp community bangs on about it. The funny thing is, every time I go to write some Clojure code - I want to open a Vim session, but I am always strangely drawn to Emacs for some reason. Recently, I decided to figure out what it was about Emacs that made me want to use it so much ove…
Hm, so the functionality you describe is not possible with vim? I was planning to switch to vim in the future. I have used Emacs before, but I never became really good at it. However, the functionality you describe really seems quite important.