Re: .emacs poser

[Tilman Ahr]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> Tilman Ahr <tilman.ahr@mailbox.tu-berlin.de> writes:

[...]

> but as for programming the US layout is 100 times
> better.
>
> A couple of friends were telling me this for several
> years. I always told them "I know the keys and
> shortcuts on the Swedish keyboard. Why would I spend
> time learning new?"  But then I tried it *once* and
> immediately understood. It is not about "other" keys
> and shortcuts, it is about *better* keys and
> shortcuts. For example, when doing C, on the US layout,
> ';' is one key. On the Swedish ditto, it is *two*. You
> don't have to write much more than a hello_word.c demo
> to realize how much more pleasant it is not having to
> do that extra hit at the end of every line. (And this
> is just one example: there are also all the brackets.)

I've never really viewed shifting as a seperate keystroke, but then I've
never done whole lots of programming…

>> I do have the „dead keys“ option enabled (to make
>> typing the usual accents for french, at least,
>> feasible without much ado) and remap CAPSLOCK[1] to
>> the compose key, nonetheless.
>
> I also remapped caps to
>
> (defun buffer-menu-files-only ()
>   (interactive)
>   (buffer-menu t) ) ;; files only

Ok. I like having it as a compose key, because I need that somewhat
frequently. It's done on a OS (GUI, really) level, so it works
consistently in all my applications. I don't really use one so
overwhelmingly much mort than the rest that it would make sense to have
application-specific custon key-mapping. Might be different if I
actually used my PC for work.

>> Yes. Definitely. But there are (coff, coff) Operating
>> Systems that make using a compose key hard, if not
>> impossible...
>
> Yeah, like what?

I never found a sane way to do it in Windows, for example. Might have
gotten better in the last couple of years, though. My experience with
Windows has been a while ago.

[...]

>>> Groff! Wow, you are a man (pun) of many
>>> surprises. Is that used outside of the Unix manpages
>>> world?
>>
>> It used to be. And I remember coming across a couple
>> of projects where it was used to nicely format simple
>> textual data in an automated way even a few years ago
>
> That's interesting, didn't know that.

IIRC the rationale was that it did all the formatting  needed for the
task at hand, and was significantly simpler and less resource-hungry
than LaTeX & Co.

[...]

>> Footnotes: [1] I have no idea why anybody would have
>> a use for that key's original function on anything
>> but a mechanic typewriter. Other than SHOUTING YOUR
>> LUNGS OUT…
>
> *And* for #define C_CONSTANT and for non-parameters in
> SQL (SELECT year ... ) - 

Alway used to just use the regular shift key for stuff like that, but
then, as I stated earlier, I've never spend significant time
programming. If you'd need to do a lot of that, CapsLock would surely be
nice to have.

> though when you think of it, that convention probably should be
> dropped.

There are quite a few conventions like that, when you really think about
it. 

> It is just that your eyes are used it it, so it will be like teaching
> an old dog how to sit.

Something like that, yes.