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Comment by tazjin | Hacker News Reader

> why do so many humans get painful RSI trauma when they try to use it?

Maybe they should use a different way of mapping keys if the default causes them trouble? Plenty of people do. Emacs has a very popular implementation of vi for example. It's up to the user, you don't need to accept somebody else's choice in this kind of software.

> How many humans can code in something as clunky as EmacsLISP?

People also code in JavaScript and somehow find that acceptable. Anything can be made to work. For what it's worth, elisp has pretty neat libraries and tooling these days (and due to things like magit breaking out UI components into reusable libraries writing interactive Emacs applications is becoming ever easier).

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Emacs shouldn't have a default configuration that physically injures users who don't change it.

I have used mostly default keybindings in Emacs for over a decade and what hurts my wrists the most is web applications that force me to use the mouse.

Did you ever remap any keys? Can't imagine what it would be like without setting `caps lock` as `control`.

I use Kinesis Advantage keyboards where one of the keys in each thumb cluster is control, and my capslock is Super. The latter is because Emacs is my window manager and Super is the modifier key for WM commands.

I think Emacs did permanent damage to my hands before I got a special keyboard. "Works for me, wontfix" isn't a good position to take on that kind of issue.

Get Vimium plugin, it will decrease your mouse usage

Vimium is great, the problem is complex web apps that don't use standard HTML elements (so they become invisible to Vimium).

It is perfect on Sun keyboards up to Type 4 and IBM keyboards up to Model F. Starting with Type 5, Sun adopted the giant caps lock key next to the pinky layout that IBM Model M keyboards used, but many Emacs users remap control back to where it should be anyway.

It's actually more appropriate for a space cadet design:

  Hyper | Super | Meta | Control | Spacebar | Control | Meta | Super | Hyper

which was available when emacs keybindings were solidifying (they originated essentially as "hey, what do you people have configured?" poll around the lab/mailing list)

Note that the modifier keys are mirrored, and Emacs' most used key (control) is closest to spacebar. Essentially, you weren't supposed to use control with your pinky while stretching your hand to hit another key - but to use opposite hand for modifier. Suddenly RSI is much less of an issue. Unfortunately not only order of keys on a modern keyboard is different (and often you lose some keys) a full 104 key has

  Ctrl | Super | Alt/Meta | Spacebar | AltGr/Meta | Super | Hyper | Control)

which is noticeably non-mirrored, depending on one's language might also lose right Meta key, and for some reason you now commonly get PrtScr/SysRq in place of Hyper on laptop keyboards.

It's not Emacs at fault, but keyboard manufacturers that put the Control key on the bottom corner of the keyboard instead of the home row.

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