Re: how to change C-x prefix to C-k in a clean way?

[Xah Lee]

On Mar 16, 6:17 am, rustom <rustompm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Your modest proposal is brilliant in some as yet to be specified way.
> > The only problem I see with it is if it has to be read aloud. For
> > example, nxf e dsx bc bee if read out loud should probably be spelled
> > out in full.
>
> Well in normal English we are used to ough having 10s of
> pronunciations seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(combination)
>
> > So, since so much time and space is saved by abbreviating
> > words, there will be a concomitant opportunity to actually expand the
> > individual letters, as in areeeayeellellwye
> > essdoubleyoueeayeteeeyeengee!
> Heh Heh!
> > The only thing I am not sure of is whether
> > that 26^10 (~141 trillion)is even close to being equal to c(26,1) +
> > C(26,2)+ .... C(26,10). But it doesn't matter. The few hundred key
> > combos in the repertoir of even the most accomplished power user is a
> > tiny fraction of those potentially available by combining modifiers
> > (Shift, Control, Meta, Alt, Super, Hyper) with the other fifty-some keys
> > within easy reach. For instance, I just queried the binding of C-H-M-s-^
> > and found that it was undefined. Surprise, surprise.
>
> I dont get this point.  Running English uses no C/Meta/Alt/Super/Hyper
> and their use is hardly claimed to be very efficient for typing.  (vi
> may be less general/customizable etc but is more ergonomic than emacs)
> And as someone said (is it Xah?) typing perl is not at all correlated
> to typing English
>
>
>
> > Still Xah is right about Dvorak. It's about 10% faster and 30% less
> > taxing. (Numbers grabbed out of the air that seem about right.)
>
> My specific (personal) problem is this:
> It is certain that the amortized benefit of learning dvorak will beat
> qwerty and keyscript correspondingly improves over dvorak.
>
> But to reap that amortized benefit one needs to assume an infinite
> life to offset the time (and essdoubleyoueeayetee  !)


Hi Rustom,

Some sort of shorthand writing can indeed improve one's typing of
natural language by a lot. I haven't studied any particular shorthand
system, my impression is that there are quite a few.

( indeed, Wikipedia lists about 40.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Shorthand )

shorthand systems are designed for professional dictation clerk or
similar. Shorthand system has little offer specific to emacs for
improving speed of writing natural lang or programing. (abbrev system
and templates (e.g. yasnippet) are much more useful)

also, there are several chording systems or chording keyboards over
the past decades. In general, they are not practical. Some of them are
envisioned to replace the standard keyboard, but they have their own
problems. The first adoption problem is that chording system requires
learning to use, while keyboard doesn't.  For vast majority of
computer users, hunt & peck works well because they don't have a need
to type much. Note that Wikipedia also has a few articles on the
various chording keyboards.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Chorded_keyboard

from a research point of view, one could imagine a input device that's
radical and so well designed, so that it takes ergonomics from the
ground up, where the hardware naturally fits the shape and movement of
human hand, and uses perhaps chording chord chording. And perhaps
comes with a fancy integrated pointing device. And perhaps uses a
software layout (of the chording) based on a shorthand systems, and
for various programing languages too... often, radical general
solution as innovation without a immediate, concrete, specific problem
it solves, is not likely to become adopted anytime soon.

(PS thanks Rustom for the email notice. Sorry for the delay in
replying.  Also, thanks Alan Mackenzie et al. I haven't yet studied
your advices in detail.  )

 Xah
∑http://xahlee.org/

☄