What is the best way to avoid getting “Emacs Pinky”? [closed]

Answer 1

I am not a programmer and I also have a hard time explaining ideas. I am on a dell mini laptop. The mouse touchpad is in a spot where my thumbs rest. My left touchpad button acts as a control key: With the side of my thumb I press it and edit in emacs as usual. I was going to map the right touchpad button to alt, but instead I have done the following: I press the button and the control key gets pressed (locked). I press it again and controll gets released. This not only made my pinky feel better it also made my editing twice as fast. (according to my org-mode clocks) It is hard to explain how nice it works. In order to do this I used the following two aplications: xbindkeys xdotool My xbindkeys config file:

###########################
# xbindkeys configuration #
###########################
# left mouse button ctrl key
"xdotool keydown ctrl"
b:1
"xdotool keyup ctrl"
control + b:1  +  Release
# vi wanna be style editing
"xdotool keydown ctrl"
release+b:3
"xdotool keyup ctrl"
release+control+b:3
# -------------------------

Before experimenting with these ideas make sure to read the man pages. Do not have anything important open. I had to kill my window manager a few times before getting it correct. notes: I use xmodmap to do all the regular stuff i.e. caps ---> control (not a full solution), swapping alt and control. (on a laptop It is ok but my thumbs cramp up) I use the window manager config file (stumpwm) to create bindings to load the proper key mapping file. (depending on my mood for the day) I am sure all this can be implemented in a different environment. My pink pain is gone, my editing is faster.

Answer 2

alt text http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/07sep/uf010710.gif

@ Xiong Chiamiov

Answer 3

Consider a Kinesis Contoured keyboard. It took me about a month to get up to speed with mine and I now consider it to be the ideal Emacs keyboard, even without the foot-pedal.

No joke. I ordered my first one with a food-pedal, but found I wasn't actually capable of coordinating the timing of my feet and my hands sufficiently to make much use of it for modifier keys. For a while I used it to toggle the integrated number pad, but I gave that up when I realized I wasn't using it because the number row on the Kinesis is so easy to reach.

Answer 4

One more approach: if you want to avoid getting "emacs pinky" simply do not use pinky to press control key.

If it is necessary remap keys on your keyboard to go in the following order:

[Ctrl][Alt][ Space ][Alt][Ctrl]

On any standard keyboard (which symmetrically positions modifier keys, e.g. any MS keyboard) now you can press Ctrl key with ring finger and Alt key with middle finger on both hands. These fingers are much stronger than pinky and can endure frequent use.

Great tool for easily remapping keyboard keys on windows is AutoHotKey

On Ubuntu I managed to do it using: Keyboard Preferences / Layouts/ Other options

Answer 5

Try viper-mode, which is a vi emulator in emacs. As someone who has switched back and forth between vi/emacs/vim several times in the last 25 years, I'm now finally trying viper-mode in emacs, and I like it. I find the vi commands to be more comfortable, but I can still keep the advanced features of emacs that I like.

Answer 6

One of the first things I do on a new machine is remap Caps Lock to a new Control.

Google around, there are plenty of .reg files available that will do this painlessly for you on Windows.