Why not bind <Ctl> to caps-lock instead of swapping them - have <Ctl> on both keys? Except for the rare people who actually use caps-lock.

That's exactly what I always do, and is easily done in both Mac OS X and in most Linux distributions.

In GNOME 2.24: "Keyboard Preferences" > "Layouts" > "Layout Options" > "Ctrl key position" > "Make CapsLock an additional Ctrl" OR "Swap Ctrl and CapsLock"

You can use the same utility to swap Esc and CapsLock.

Broke my xmonad. :-(

Because this frees up the ctrl key to be an extra backspace!

If you're just learning Emacs this is an essential piece of literature to read to get you up to snuff on Emacs.

And always good to check back everyone once and a while for experts.

You did when he wrote that article. And it was a right pain too...

For Windows, KeyTweak looks like a helpful free utility for remapping the keyboard:

http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/

It's not old, it's just wrong to emphasize _the tool_ so much. Don't know about the author, but being productive doesn't equal being masterful typist. I had a member of the team, who was above average productive in notepad (yes, notepad!) and I also had someone who was below average productive in emacs (I always let the programmers decide, what tool they use). And I am not talking about being fast, but about producing quality code.

While it could have been better phrased, he is correct that the "Effective Emacs" post is old and well-known. It's been mentioned dozens of times on HN -- so it's a little surprising that no one had yet submitted the link.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=yegge+emacs+site%3A...