Re: C-f, C-b, C-n and C-p or right, left, down, up?

[Daniel B.]

Barman Brakjoller wrote:
> 
> >From the Emacs tutorial (C-h t):
> 
>  "...  We recommend learning C-b, C-f, C-n and C-p for three
>  reasons.  First, they work on all kinds of terminals.  Second, once
>  you gain practice at using Emacs, you will find that typing these
> Control
>  characters is faster than typing the arrow keys ..."
> 
> Is it worth it? 

Yes, but reconfigure your keyboard so that the Caps Lock key functions 
as the control key.  (I'm assuming you're using a PC-style keyboard.)

Emacs control-character sequences were designed when the standard place 
for the control key was just to the left of where the A key is (in the 
US layout).

Unfortunately, IBM put the Caps Lock key to the left of the A key, and
pushed the Control key down into a corner where it's hard to reach and
is extremely inconvenient for many Emacs control characters.

If you reconfigure your keyboard, you'll understand how Emacs control 
characters were meant to be used.  If you don't, you'll wonder how on
earth anyone can think control-character sequences are faster.


If you're running Emacs on Linux under X11 (e.g., GNOME, KDE), you can
reconfigure your control and caps-lock keys in X11's configuration file.

If you're running Emacs on MS Windows, see NTEmac's instructions; they
mention several ways to swap the control and caps-lock keys.





Daniel
-- 
Daniel Barclay
dsb@smart.net