On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 11:02:03AM EDT, Barclay, Daniel wrote:
> Chris Jones wrote:
> > On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 11:49:34AM EDT, Barclay, Daniel wrote:
> >> Chris Jones wrote:
> >>> [..]
> >>>
> >>> ... homo sapiens ... opposable thumb.
> ...
> > The indirect relationship is that thumbs are both very flexible and
> > underused in keyboarding.
>
> Yes.
But thanks for reminding me that we share this feature with our less
troubled/toublesome cousins.
> >> ... you seemed to find Emacs' modifier keys inconvenient.
> > That I don't know.. what I _do_ know is that it took me months to
> > assimilate a minimal subset of vim keyboard actions to the point
> > where anything I want to do is done before I have a chance to start
> > thinking, now how do I do this.. and when I look at emacs tutorials,
> > it looks like I would need quite some time to unlearn my vim habits
> > and acquire emacs ones ...
>
> Yes, to be proficient will probably take a while.
Aye, there's the rub.
> > that might prove to be unsuitable from an ergonomic standpoint and
> Well, I don't know how the ergnomics would work for you, but for
> me long-term use of Emacs (with the control in its pre-PC traditional
> position, of course) hasn't caused any hand RSI problems.
I'm not one of the RSI-prone people. Rather, I'm one of the otherwise
challenged types with hands like shovels that don't seem to be fully
connected. Before I went through this nightmare of learning to type
propah.. I clocked myself somewhere in the vicinity of 15 words per
minute - and that was for regular simple everyday English text.
> > would therefore require that I start remapping - which is absolute
> > hell...
> Yep, although in composing e-mail messages in Mozilla Seamonkey's
> mail composition editor, which doesn't use Emacs or vi bindings (oh
> for Netscape 4.7, which did use Emacs/Bash bindings!), I don't get
> confused often. Of course, that's not equivalent to your potential
> vi-vs.-Emacs case (since Seamonkey has many fewer editing key
> bindings).
I do know how to tell seamonkey - or gtk apps rather how to use emacs
key bindings.. but this probably only afffects the gui and not the
seamonkey "editor".
> >> How hard is it to put your left pinky on the key immediately to the
> >> left of the A key and then put your left ring finger on the A key?
> >> That leaves those fingers right next to each other.
> >
> > Yes, that is quite feasible, although hitting the A key with the
> > ring finger is also known as blasphemy.
>
> Well, if you use Emacs, you just don't let a typing teacher see you.
> Or you tell him or her that you're in some typing mode other than
> standarding typing mode.
In these difficult times, if I could afford a typing teacher, they'd
better keep their mouth shut.
:-)
And in any case, if they were not able to teach me computer keyboarding,
as opposed to the ancient art of ruling the typewriter, I would fire
them on the spot.
> >> Or was your comment not implying that it was hard but just reacting
> >> to its difference from proper (per typing class) fingering?
> >
> > Well, that's basically the issue. Since typing tutorials say nothing
> > of the Control and Alt keys,
> Do they address computer typing (with modifier keys other that the
> shift keys)? (My last typing classes were 30 years ago, so of source
> they only dealt with plain typewriters.)
No... I'm self-taught mostly via gtypist .. politically correct app..
that teaches nothing beyond good old typewriter stuff that goes back
some 30+ years.
The good thing is that it lets you create you own drills/lessons..
I think I should focus on something like C programming drills, bash,
possibly python, etc. that I could practice over and over so as to
acquire muscle memory for that kind of stuff.
Becoming proficient with all the {}/[] .. etc. should be comparatively
easy, since those "languages" are structurally simpler in essence than
written English with its thousands of syllable combinations.
And if I spent enough time refining them, I would definitely hand them
over to the gtypist developer/maintainer for review.
> > ... I felt that I had to be creative and that's where I realized
> > that "curling" each thumb to reach them was not only much easier
> > than doing it via my pinkies (even with the left Control key
> > remapped to CapsLock) but also provided a mechanism that was
> > consistent across both hands.
> > My curling ability only extends about two keys-widths to the left of
> > right of the keyboard comfortably, so I had to remap the Winkeys to
> > Control.
Errata: "to the left or right of the space bar".. I think I corrected
this elsewhere.
> Well, you definitely want to do at least that. Trying to use Emacs
> with the Control keys in the default PC-style position is essentially
> impossible.
When I started to play with this stuff, I initially remapped the left
Control key to the one advertised as CapsLock and actioned it with my
left pinky.. but since I wanted to use the correct finger of the
opposite hand to type the "modified" key, this only solved half of the
problem. Due to my physical limitations, I really did not fancy using
the right pinky or ring finger to hit right Alt/Control. And since
nobody was really telling me what I should be doing, this emboldened me
to decide that "thumb curling" as you christened it, was the way to go.
I kinda like the symmetry of it as well as dedicating separate circuitry
to modifier keys.
> >> Hmm. I think I have "Emacs control-key mode" vs. "regular mode."
> >>
> >> I notice that I shift my left hand left a bit (to put my pinky on
> >> the left-of-A control key) and widen my fingers (some fingers stay
> >> in their normal columns (e.g., index finger for F key)).
> > Pretty much what I'm trying to avoid.
> >
> >> Note that I don't typically shift to control-key mode for just a
> >> single command (one control-key sequence).
> >
> > Not sure what you mean.
>
> When I shift my left hand left for "control-key mode," I'm not usually
> doing that for just a single control key; that is, the it's not one
> pair of hand shifts for a single control key, it's usually a pair of
> hand shifts amortized over several control key hits (those in the next
> paragraph).
Gotcha.. But in fact, as my typing becomes faster and I'm getting a bit
closer to my original of "wanting to input" something and having it
translate automatically to hand movements.. I'm actually beginning to
think that paring down all the Control/Alt mode stuff to its bare
minimum could be part of the solution:
Simple example:
In order not to have to remember the exact syntax, I retrieve via bash's
history some template of a long-ish command that needs to be edited
before feeding it to the "system".
At this point, I'm often finding it more efficient and less effort
(discomfort) to take a quick look - a split second refresher course so
to speak.. Ctrl-E to the end of the line, Ctrl-W to remove those
words/tokens that I want to modify and retype whatever needs to be
changed.. than say, do a few Alt/Ctrl + B/F to navigate the line
followed by more contortions to delete a word or character here or
there.
> >> More typically, I shift my hand left for "move-around and cut/copy-
> >> and-paste mode" (e.g, C-a, C-e, C-p, C-n, C-w, C-y, etc.) and then
> >> shift back to normal touch-typing position for "typing words" mode.
> >
> > Is this in bash..? vim..? emacs..?
> Emacs. Those are some common movement and cutting/pasting key
> combinations. (Bash is somewhat similar.)
In vim, I find that a lot of very useful stuff can be done by switching
to the so-called "visual modes" without basically moving one's fingers
away from the home row.
> ...
>
> > Ctrl-h in vim that "back deletes" one character is a good example of
> > this. Unless you absolutely need to have something engraved on the
> > key that describes its behavior, I clearly find it preferable to the
> > "Backspace" key, which is a lot harder to reach.
> Yes, C-h in Emacs should perform some kind of backspace operation
> (back-deletion or at least movement), since C-h in ASCII is the
> Backspace character.
I believe that like C-S/C-Q and friends this belongs in the terminal
driver's psyche - it's at a lower level and already lived there long
before the applications came along.
> I still Stallman went a little bit too "mnemonic" in some of the
> control-key choices (e.g., using C-h (the Backspace character) for
> "help" instead of using it for backspacing/deleting).
Unless it's something you only use on a rare basis, mnemonic is useful
for the first couple of days at most. After that, "useable" is the
yardstick.
I use "<" and ">" to move between tabs in the Elinks browser.. both
mnemonic and useable. Ctr+PageUp/PageDn in seamonkey is somewhat
mnemonic, but does not quite deliver in terms of "useability".
And please don't get me started on "discoverability"..
:-)
> >> Well, actually, C-z isn't that frequent.
> >
> > That's no excuse.. in any case, background a process..? precious.
>
> What do you mean?
My little joke. But it's a fact that for some, C-z'ing is a way of life.
> Emacs copied C-z's assignment from the shell, so any key-choice
> problem isn't Emacs' fault.
stty -a for a list of those key combos that live at a lower level than
applications -shell included.
CJ
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
