I have to admit that my current major Emacs trouble is moving between Linux and OSX. Switching meta and hyper causes me major brain-fry (alt is immediately left of the space bar on every keyboard but those made by Apple).
The workflow stuff looks cool, but between swapping Caps_Lock with Control_L and claiming M-x "involves scrunching your left hand up", I think most hackers would benefit more from learning better touch typing, rather than moving their contortions around the way the author does. You weren't meant to use the same hand for the key and the modifier--that's why there's another set of modifiers for your other hand, and why moving Control_L but not Control_R into easier reach will tempt you into dangerous habits.
Also, while it's really its own discussion, I think Emacs is more usable with the Dvorak keyboard layout. Emacs's default keybindings pack a lot of important keys into the left hand on Qwerty (C-x, C-c, C-v, C-r, C-s), while with Dvorak they're distributed more evenly.
Remapping left-Alt to Ctrl is another option; that way, you can hold Ctrl with your thumb while you type.
Emacs never ceases to amaze me. I've been using it for 15 or so years and yet had never run across the "kbd" macro or the "remap" event. Both seem very useful.
What I would really like is an Emacs macro that would just insert the appropriate keybinding code for use in an .emacs file -- there doesn't seem to be one but it seems like it would be an obvious help. Or is this one of those Emacs things that is obvious and everyone knows but me?
This one prompts you to type a literal key sequence (exactly like with `describe-key', C-h k) and inserts it at the point in a representation that the *-set-key functions can use. As written it's bound to to C-c k, and only in the scope of elisp buffers.
(defun insert-key-sequence (key-repr)
"Reads a literal key sequence from the user
and inserts a representation of it at point,
suitable for `global-set-key' or `local-set-key'."
(interactive "KKey sequence? ")
(prin1 key-repr (current-buffer))
(insert " "))
(add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
#'(lambda ()
(local-set-key "\C-ck" #'insert-key-sequence)))
(run-hooks 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook)
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work for mouse chords.
Nice. I tried to write a quick version of this for my response, but wasn't aware of insert-key-sequence.
Edit: insert-key-sequence doesn't exist on Emacs 22.3.1, is that a more recent addition?
Also, while not crucial, I prefer to add a my-X-mode-hook function and add things to that, rather than adding several lambdas to the mode hook - it's easier to modify them all after binding that way.
Not offhand, but I looked it up and I think what you want is `key-description'. It prints key sequences, so e.g. (key-description "\370") evals to "M-x".
The simplest way I've found to format the keyboard shortcuts is to type "C-h k [your keyboard combination]" (which is C-h for help, k for keybinding), and then when it says e.g. "C-x M-. is undefined", plug the key description into the following:
The article goes into the significance of global-set-key vs. local-set-key; until you have more specific intentions, global-set-key is probably what you want.
I've done a couple sessions teaching developers in using Emacs, and one point I always stress is that the Emacs help system is exhaustive, but you have to learn how it's organized. (It uses funny terminology sometimes.)
Thanks for this article, shows how much more there still is to learn about emacs(at least for me). I will definitely use the site as a resource from here on out.
