new version for emacs ergonomic keybinding

[Xah Lee]

My ergonomic system now has a new version:

http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html

The keybinding is designed in 2007-07, and the elisp began more as a
experimental code, so that it is easy for emacs hacker to try it out
and mod it to their own likings. I did not see it to be a complete,
self-contained, elisp package.

Over the past year, in searching for the most efficient operation with
emacs, i've done a lot more work on this, especially during the past 2
months. With my increased elisp knowledge in the past years, now, the
code is more of a complete system that any emacs user can simply
download and try it out, without having to know any elisp.

The improvements in the past month are:

    • The elisp code for the ergomap is now more designed for one
brainless install and have it work, as opposed to for elisp coders who
wants to experiment.

    • Ctrl+‹key› space keys are now removed, so users don't have to
fiddle with elisp code when they want to kick the habit.

    • Fixed compability for all major programing lang modes and
standard emacs special modes (e.g. minibuffer, shell, info, dired, cua-
mode, ...).

(thanks to Lennart Borgman for suggestion on how to fix cua-mode, and
thanks to Alan Mackenzie for suggesting (kill-line 0) for kill-line-
backward)

---------------

per a recent thread, esp input from Alan Mackenzie and Nikolaj
Schumacher, i've now some work in the past week, so that the separate
file modern_operations.el which contained several convenient functions
and standard keybindings is now part of the ergonomic keybinding code.
(so that, you just download one single elisp file and all should work)

---------------

in a summarized description:

• all most frequently used editing commands such as cursor moving and
copy/paste etc are mapped to Alt+‹key› according to typing ease.

• none-editing related but frequently used commands such as New, Open,
Close, Sav, Save As, Print now has the standard Ctrl+‹key› shortcuts.
(This is added this week, and was not originally part of the ergonomic
keybinding design, since the original design only focused on text
editing related commands and only uses the Meta+‹key› space. But After
using the design for over a year, and since most Ctrl+‹key› space is
empty now, it seems natural to add these common needed and universal
compatible commands and shortcuts in.)

• over the past year in my study on emacs ergonomics and user
interface, i have come to realiz few problems of emacs. In particular,
there's no fitting elisp command in emacs that corresponds to the
standard and very useful New, Close operations. These as a side
effect, also fixed emacs's “*scratch*” buffer problem as detailed in
http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_scratch_buffer.html

-----------------

When adopting a new keybinding, such as this or Qwerty to Dvorak, it
is often very frustrating in the beginning because the frequent
correction of muscle memory. In working with this ergomap, often i do
experiment on some new binding placements with some new text
transformation commands so work flow is slowed down as often i pressed
the wrong key by muscle memory or have to pause and think what's the
command or key to use now.

If you try this ergomap for 2 weeks, full time in your daily coding,
i'm pretty sure you'll never look back on emacs default. Now with the
standard command/keys New, Open, Close, Sav, Save As, Print, now it
makes emacs compatible with modern UI as well as being most efficient
keybinding you'll find in any app.

-------------------

To do:

• perhaps make this into a minor mode.
• make it customizable thru emacs customization system.
• possibly merge the dvorak and qwerty files into just one single lisp
file, and let user use customization to choose what keyboard layout
they are on.
• some new text transformation commands in consideration ... slightly
complex to detail at the moment.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄