[Chicago] Vim or Emacs

[Cosmin Stejerean]

> I've heard this advice countless times, and tried it on several
> occasions ... and I ultimately found it to make keystrokes *harder*.
> I think this may result from three things:
>
> 1) I also use my left pinky to hit the Alt/Option and Command keys;
> using Caps as Control makes my pinky have to bounce back and forth
> between the two areas, resulting in plenty of mis-strokes and/or
> slowness as I "feel" for which key is Alt.

You can use your pinky to press the Command key? Perhaps it depends
based on the kind of keyboard but I just tried on a MBP and there's no
way I could do that regularly without seriously injuring my hand. I
generally use my thumb for the Command and Option keys.

> 2) Caps as Control makes certain key combinations (e.g., Control-Z) difficult.

Are you just changing capslock to Control or are you swapping them (so
Control becomes Capslock)? I never use capslock so I get two Control
keys by my left pinky so I can use whichever is most comfortable.

> 3) My brain can't seem to handle context-based finger switching,
> making Control-Shift-[key] combos a great big mess.

How do you normally type Control-Shift combos? The recommended way
would be to use the Control and Shift on opposite sides of the
keyboard. But now that I think of it I don't think I've used
Control-Shift combos much outside of Eclipse (and that was before I
learned about Emacs key bindings in Eclipse).

One of the big problems with using capslock as control is that it
makes it nearly impossible to type on somebody else's computer.  I
really wish I could find a laptop with a key layout similar to
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage.htm (I use that for my desktop).

-- 
Cosmin Stejerean
http://blog.offbytwo.com