Re: emacs for everything?

[Maciek Pasternacki]

On Prickle-Prickle, The Aftermath 37, 3170 YOLD, Lee Sau Dan wrote:

>     Maciek> X11 binds Windows keys as Super modifier, 
>
> Only for recent versions of XFree86.  With previous versions, I needed
> to  modify the  config files  to do  that.  And  there isn't  too much
> well-formed  documentations for  configuring  the sophisticated  'xkb'
> system.

Well, `xkb' *is* poorly documented.  That's why I still use .Xmodmap
to switch parenthesis to Lisp-machine-like layout (`(' is where `['
used to be, `[' is where `{' used to be, `{' is where `(' used to be
-- it is convenient in both programming (maybe if I programmed much in
some curly-braces-laden language (now I do mostly Python), I'd think
about other place for {}) and writing normal text).  .Xmodmap can also
give symbols to so-called multimedial-keys (play/pause, mute, e-mail,
WWW, etc.) -- I own a keyboard with these since maybe two weeks so
I haven't yet configured them all optimally but ejecting / injecting /
/ mounting CD-ROM with one keypress is surely convenient.

On older versions of XF86 one can also map windows keys to Super with
.Xmodmap.  I don't remember how exactly to spell it but it shouldn't
take much googling.

I use XKB though to switch my Caps Lock and left Ctrl key (like Sun
keyboards have) -- this one I found in docs. ;) In Emacs it makes
*big* difference.

> And I also bind the otherwise useless "Pause" key on PC keyboards.  ;)

Oh.  It's really useless here! ;)  I've grown up on DOS where
Ctrl+Break was one of more important combos -- it was used to force
program to stop (like Ctrl+C on Un*x console).  When I run out of
`multimedia' keys I'll consider using it. :)

>     Maciek> There is no universally-good configuration and I sculpted
>     Maciek> my own from ground up; it took some time but now I feel
>     Maciek> that I'm tha boss on my desktop and it behaves as I need.
>
> Yeah.  It takes may be a few hours  to read the FVWM man page and 1 or
> 2 more hours  to try out the combinations that I  like.  But I've done
> this just twice or thrice (when I upgrade to a new version of fvwm and
> want to  enjoy the new features) in  the past 8 years.   So, it's only
> maybe 20  hours in  8 years.  The  gained productivity of  course pays
> that off.

And not only productivity -- configuring FVWM is just fun.  Sawfish
was also fun and had some cool ideas but I couldn't stand its
everything-incompatible pseudo-Lisp (guy could just use Scheme if he
didn't like idea of using Common Lisp...) and at the time I used it it
was crashing frequently.

Maybe some plugin like fvwm-perl could be used to make FVWM talk
Common Lisp?  Now THIS would be 1337! :)

-- 
__    Maciek Pasternacki <maciekp@japhy.fnord.org> [ http://japhy.fnord.org/ ]
`| _   |_\  / { (2a) No matter how hard you try, you can't make a baby in much
,|{-}|}| }\/less then 9 months;trying to speed this up *might* make it slower,
\/   |____/ but it won't make it happen any quicker. }      ( RFC 1925 )  -><-