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Context:

  1. Right now, in my late twenties, I decided to really learn and use touch typing (sad, I know). Until now, I have survived typing moderately fast, but not using the correct technique. Also, I am trying to learn touch typing after already being a heavy Emacs user.

  2. I swapped the Caps-lock and the Control-key.

Thus, I would like to know if there is "a guideline" in some manual on how to execute vanilla Emacs key bindings (e.g. C-b, M-x, M-f, M-<, C-a, C-x s) considering touch typing principles.

For instance, one principle is:

Touch typing one's never supposed to press two keys simultaneously with one hand. This is for

Is there a manual on which fingers to use when executing key bindings?

Drew
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Pedro Delfino
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    I don't know the answer (my *guess* is "probably not; seems unlikely"), but "one's never supposed to press two keys simultaneously with one hand" is absolutely trivial if you configure your OS to use sticky modifier keys, as then you don't ever need to hold down a modifier key. I recommend it (I found it unexpectedly easy to transition to). – phils Jun 29 '23 at 06:00
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    Wait until you hear that on the keyboards for which Emacs was developed, the ctrl keys were located under the thumbs, where alt is now on Windows and cmd is on Mac. As a Mac user, I can report that this is way more comfortable, since you can use the strongest thumb to slap right under it, instead of straining the already pathetic pinkies. And if one uses a Microsoft Natural or Sculpt keyboard with their gigantic alt keys (remapped to cmd), the experience is nothing short of an epiphany. Alas, since cmd is already extensively used by system commands, the keys can't really be remapped to ctrl. – aaa Jun 29 '23 at 09:14
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    However, there are two workarounds that save the poor pinkies from wear. Firstly, ‘Evil’ brings in Vim's movement keys, which sidestep both the arrow keys and the ctrl-something alternatives, and shifts the movement commands onto the alphabet keys for regular touch-typing enjoyment. Secondly, Doom Emacs adds a ‘menu’ of frequently-used commands, where they're triggered with a sequence of single keys after pressing the space bar (in the ‘normal’ mode of Evil). With these two, ctrl is mostly unused, and for remaining occasions I'm not bothered if I press the shortcut with one hand. – aaa Jun 29 '23 at 09:30

1 Answers1

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The short answer is no, there's no such manual. A broader answer follows.

Touch typing principles should (and can) be applied to the Emacs keybindings. The primary goal of that is to prevent a typist from attaining a Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The secondary is typing faster. In reality, to achieve these goals, the principles are a good foundation but of lesser importance than carefully thought-out and tested approaches.

Emacs, especially with its customizability, doesn't stand in the way of doing that at all. For instance, I use most of the built-in keybindings with QWERTY and Dvorak layouts (MacBook Pro and Kinesis Advantage keyboards) with a few easily-added adaptations.

For more examples, research, and ideas, look into the following resources. Partially, they might play a role of the manual you've been looking for.

Y. E.
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