gordan@maccs.UUCP (gordan) (05/10/88)
In article <1197@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> fowser@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Scott Fowser) writes:
-
-One feature about vi that I like is the ability to keep you fingers in
-one place during the whole editing session, whether inserting or
-editing. Having to press escape to leave insert mode is inconvenient, but
-I define "K" to mean escape from insert mode with
You're right, the most annoying part about using Emacs (for me, anyway)
is hitting Control keys and Escape sequences. But once you get used to
the extra power Emacs provides, it will be a case of "how did I ever
live without all these capabilities?"
However, many modern keyboards (PS/2, and I believe one of the keyboards
available for the Mac) have two symmetrically placed Control and Alt keys.
This is an excellent idea for the same reason that symmetrically placed
Shift keys is an excellent idea -- touch-typists can hit one of these
modifier keys without losing keyboard finger positioning. Use one of
these keyboards (and define the Alt key as Emacs's Meta key) and you're
laughing.
On a more general note, now that standards like ISO 8859 have arrived,
character sets have increased in size from plain old US ASCII. What
provisions will there be for inputting these characters? Say you want
to enter the copyright symbol into your text -- will every editor and
word processor simply define some haphazard set of inputting methods or
is anyone thinking about defining a standard keyboard layout?
In the long run, perhaps, chord keyboards would be preferable. There
would probably be a sizeable learning curve, but for sheer speed they'd
be hard to beat, and they could be used to input a virtually unlimited
number of distinct characters. Perhaps the Japanese, for whom the
problem of a large character set is even more acute, might come up with
something along these lines...
--
Gordan Palameta
uunet!mnetor!maccs!gordanjoss@ur-tut (Josh Sirota) (05/11/88)
In article <1181@maccs.UUCP> gordan@maccs.UUCP () writes: >In article <1197@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> fowser@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Scott Fowser) writes: >-One feature about vi that I like is the ability to keep you fingers in >-one place during the whole editing session, whether inserting or >-editing. Having to press escape to leave insert mode is inconvenient, but >-I define "K" to mean escape from insert mode with > >You're right, the most annoying part about using Emacs (for me, anyway) >is hitting Control keys and Escape sequences. But once you get used to >the extra power Emacs provides, it will be a case of "how did I ever >live without all these capabilities?" You don't even really need the special meta-keys that some keyboards provide. The ESCAPE key is just as natural for me to hit as any other key on the keyboard without moving my hands (just like delete) and control is even more natural. Quick (and seasoned) EMACS users have no need to have their hands ever leave the main part of the keyboard. My left pinky just seems to naturally alternate between all of those keys on the left side, like control and escape. I personally now have major problems with the keyboards that move control down to the lower left and escape to the upper right ... Big problems. Fortunately, in a powerful editor like EMACS (actually, I use Jove ALL the time, for everything, on PC's and UNIX machines (and a VMS version is in the works too)) you can bind the backquote key to the same function that escape is usually bound to and I don't notice the movement of the escape key at all. To use backquote I merely quote it, as though I was inserting some other control character. So your complaints about EMACS may make sense when you're trying to learn it, but once you're used to it then it's silly. Josh -- Josh Sirota INTERNET: joss@tut.cc.rochester.edu BITNET: joss_ss@uordbv.bitnet ur-tut!joss@cs.rochester.edu UUCP: ...!rochester!ur-tut!joss