Sorry fam for the late response! I was writing up a draft a couple of days ago, but that one somehow disappeared. Which…, is kinda peculiar as I don’t recall the last time a draft spoofed out of existence. Regardless, it really puts me off to start a reply all over. As such, I’ve been mustering motivation since 😅. Anyhow, thank you for your patience!
Thank you (also) for sharing your journey around the many text editors! If anything, it reminds me how life has got many surprises for us. As such, being wed to any software, regardless of how powerful it may be, may still result in a break later down the line.
Thank you (once more) for touching on ergonomics! I haven’t mentioned it, but I do experience some RSI-related pains/aches.
Steps I've undertaken to alleviate the pains/aches. This has been put in spoilers, because I don't think it's very relevant for the subject matter.
I use a split keyboard, and hope to switch in the upcoming months to one of the most ergonomic keyboard around.
I have made changes to my workflow to become (mostly) keyboard-only, so little to no mouse/touchpad. Which led me to embrace and become more familiar with modal editing.
I have dabbled into the alt keyboard layouts and intend to make the switch when the aforementioned ergonomic keyboard arrives.
I have made many other changes to how I work in order to better align with ergonomics; laptop-stand so that it’s lifted to the appropriate height, worked on better posture, only making minimal use of my phone etc. And intend to back this up further with a height-adjustable desk.
Employ speech to text whenever I can afford it.
Anyhow, I do have concerns on how Emacs’ default keybindings might be detrimental on someone using a regular keyboard. I believe this article makes an interesting case on this. That’s also one of the reasons why I’ve (almost) exclusively been on evil mode.
I hope you’ve recovered completely from the strain on your pinky! And, hopefully, nothing else has been causing any issues since!
Btw, the trick with ci" and ca" is pretty cool! Thank you for teaching me something new! FWIW, it was reproducible within Emacs’ evil mode*.
Hey, yeah, I know the feeling, every time I lose an already typed reply I completely lose motivation to rewrite it.
Yeah, my pinky strain issue is completely gone, I also used to have some more pain on my wrist which made me go through a very similar journey to you, I took many steps for it to the point where nowadays my setup is (in order of what I think has made the largest impact)
Using i3/sway as my WM for a keyboard centric usage
Switching to Colemak and learning touch typing properly
Split ortholineal keyboard (crkbd)
Trackball instead of mouse
I’ve also got a height adjustable desk and a good chair to prevent issues with my back, and my monitors use an arm to be in the right position. It was a slow process of making one change here, few months later another z etc, but this has been my setup for a few years and all of my pains in wrist, lower back, neck, etc have disappeared. I figured if I’m going to ve sitting in front of a computer typing stuff for 8h a day I need to make that as comfortable as possible to be able to do it for longer.
As for emacs with evil mode I was sure that ci" would work, that’s basic vim functionality, what I’m less sure would work is more complex stuff for which I use plugins, e.g. <space>srq" (Surround Replace Quotes with ") to replace the next quotes for " (e.g. changing var = 'some text' to var = "some text"). That same plugin allows me to also do <space>srb[ to Surround Replace Bracket/Braces with [ (to change the surrounding [, (, or { to [ ). Another plugin allows me to move to any part of the screen in 4 keystrokes, I press s the two characters of where I want to move, and a third disambiguation character and the cursor moves there. Those are advanced usages that I think will be difficult to reproduce in emacs, plus plugins will not incorporate the basic ideas for movements.
Sorry fam for the late response! I was writing up a draft a couple of days ago, but that one somehow disappeared. Which…, is kinda peculiar as I don’t recall the last time a draft spoofed out of existence. Regardless, it really puts me off to start a reply all over. As such, I’ve been mustering motivation since 😅. Anyhow, thank you for your patience!
Thank you (also) for sharing your journey around the many text editors! If anything, it reminds me how life has got many surprises for us. As such, being wed to any software, regardless of how powerful it may be, may still result in a break later down the line.
Thank you (once more) for touching on ergonomics! I haven’t mentioned it, but I do experience some RSI-related pains/aches.
Steps I've undertaken to alleviate the pains/aches. This has been put in spoilers, because I don't think it's very relevant for the subject matter.
Anyhow, I do have concerns on how Emacs’ default keybindings might be detrimental on someone using a regular keyboard. I believe this article makes an interesting case on this. That’s also one of the reasons why I’ve (almost) exclusively been on evil mode.
I hope you’ve recovered completely from the strain on your pinky! And, hopefully, nothing else has been causing any issues since!
Btw, the trick with
ci"andca"is pretty cool! Thank you for teaching me something new! FWIW, it was reproducible within Emacs’ evil mode*.Hey, yeah, I know the feeling, every time I lose an already typed reply I completely lose motivation to rewrite it.
Yeah, my pinky strain issue is completely gone, I also used to have some more pain on my wrist which made me go through a very similar journey to you, I took many steps for it to the point where nowadays my setup is (in order of what I think has made the largest impact)
I’ve also got a height adjustable desk and a good chair to prevent issues with my back, and my monitors use an arm to be in the right position. It was a slow process of making one change here, few months later another z etc, but this has been my setup for a few years and all of my pains in wrist, lower back, neck, etc have disappeared. I figured if I’m going to ve sitting in front of a computer typing stuff for 8h a day I need to make that as comfortable as possible to be able to do it for longer.
As for emacs with evil mode I was sure that
ci"would work, that’s basic vim functionality, what I’m less sure would work is more complex stuff for which I use plugins, e.g.<space>srq"(Surround Replace Quotes with ") to replace the next quotes for " (e.g. changingvar = 'some text'tovar = "some text"). That same plugin allows me to also do<space>srb[to Surround Replace Bracket/Braces with [ (to change the surrounding [, (, or { to [ ). Another plugin allows me to move to any part of the screen in 4 keystrokes, I presssthe two characters of where I want to move, and a third disambiguation character and the cursor moves there. Those are advanced usages that I think will be difficult to reproduce in emacs, plus plugins will not incorporate the basic ideas for movements.May I ask why emacs in evil-mode instead of Nvim?