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A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

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Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#91
post #72
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cordless beard trimmer doesn’t run when plugged in, so you have to wait for it to charge before using it. When getting ready in the morning, you can’t sit around for an hour waiting for it to charge enough to function. It makes no sense.

I mean from an EE perspective it makes some sense, because you save some on circuitry (not like a lot in absolute cost, but your cordless beard trimmer probably doesn't have a lot of margin). So the real reason is probably just to make it cheaper. (Well maybe not in the Mac case)

Yeah in case of the beard trimmer it's because it uses quite a lot of power so you need a beefy adapter to run it. These often still use NiMH cells and trickle charge with 100mA or so.

For a mouse this is all irrelevant because it uses so little power that it can easily be powered by a regular USB.

Also, many bathrooms don't have sockets anyway. At least not nearby (and cooper is expensive too these days)

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#92
post #54

Interesting choice of window manager. Has anyone here used PaperWM and can comment on how its "scrollable" interface compares to more traditional tiling WMs like i3?

It’s awesome. I’ve switched to Niri which was inspired by Paper. When I use Gnome, I always install Paper. I never liked tiling WMs because I generally have a full height text editor, a full size web browser, and a handful of background terminals. This is cramped in a tiling arrangement, but works beautifully in a scrolling WM.

True but this is why most tiling interfaces have paging. Scrolling is an interesting alternative though.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#93
post #81

I recently rediscovered Ratpoison WM and the origin of its name (tl;dr it is meant to prevent the need for using a mouse). I think the main issue for me really is that navigating the web is sometimes faster with a pointer. I already use vim and the shell for everything else, but navigating Google Maps or Wikipedia or Stack Overflow is just easier when you can point and scroll.

Have you tried Vimium or something similar?

I have not. Worth a try?

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#94

Windows used to be awesome at this. The norm (and expectation) was for programs to provide keyboard shortcuts for all sorts of things. They were gently surfaced right where you needed them - e.g. underlines on the menus, and accelerator key shortcuts listed beside menu items and in mouseover captions. That made them natural to learn and easy to adopt. Then some dolt at Microsoft decided those cues were "clutter", and…

Yeah. The window snapping also seems to have been broken. Seems pretty unpredictable as to what the outcome is now.

Eg windows key right/left sometimes snaps it to half half. But sometimes to 1/4. 3/4. and sometimes to another screen.

No idea why, but seems like botched UX when outcome of keyboard shortcuts feel random to the user

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#95
post #4

I switched to mousing left-handed at some point, years ago. I noticed some of my left-handed colleagues mousing wrong-handed, possibly because of right-handed siblings, and getting some good use out of having pen and paper more easily accessible because of it. I decided I'd do the same. Something I didn't expect: with my left hand on the home row, I can touch the mouse by stretching my little finger. So it's no effor…

I’ve got a trackball on left that can scroll with rotating the ball.

Still very much secondary to mouse but I find myself reaching for it on other computers subconsciously and being surprised when there is just empty desk

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#97
post #78
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is so stupid, to learn some "useful shorcuts" which are existing only until some megacorp is going to change anything in their software (OS, IDE, browser has almost none of them). I am a huge proponent of learning touchtyping, then vim and... nothing more.

wait, so, do you really move your mouse cursor all the way up to the little tiny x every time you'd like to close a tab in your browser?

Closing tab is at least 10x more rare event for me than choosing another tab, and for me doing this with cursor is handy since all the webpages suppose I have a mouse and none of them suppose I know how to surf without mouse. Choosing another tab for me is never like Ctrl[-Shift]-Tab because I have too much of them.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#98
post #66
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is so stupid, to learn some "useful shorcuts" which are existing only until some megacorp is going to change anything in their software (OS, IDE, browser has almost none of them). I am a huge proponent of learning touchtyping, then vim and... nothing more.

Set up your own shortcuts for the software that matters to you. Terminal emulator and text editor/IDE will pay for the effort spent very quickly.

That "pay" will always disappears, but the keyboard placement and vim commands never disappear.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#99
post #72
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cordless beard trimmer doesn’t run when plugged in, so you have to wait for it to charge before using it. When getting ready in the morning, you can’t sit around for an hour waiting for it to charge enough to function. It makes no sense.

I mean from an EE perspective it makes some sense, because you save some on circuitry (not like a lot in absolute cost, but your cordless beard trimmer probably doesn't have a lot of margin). So the real reason is probably just to make it cheaper. (Well maybe not in the Mac case)

Cordless trimmers are generally waterproof because some people use those under the shower.

Having them non operational when charging can very well be a safety measure so that they don't use it while plugged in.

There's really no excuse for headsets like Bose where such circuitry is a rounding error in the hefty price tag.

Hell, they even have USB circuitry that enumerates as an actual device on the bus but couldn't be arsed to have it be a proper audio class device.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#100
post #98
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Set up your own shortcuts for the software that matters to you. Terminal emulator and text editor/IDE will pay for the effort spent very quickly.

That "pay" will always disappears, but the keyboard placement and vim commands never disappear.

Why would it disappear? I have used the same key bindings (from Sublime) on Jetbrains IDEs for years.
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