How would the optimal Emacs-keyboard look like?
- by Thorsten
Emacs is a historic piece of software. It promises outstanding productivity for keyboard wizards that really want to explore it's power. The effective use of the keyboard is key to Emacs productivity, but the keyboard hardware has changed a lot since the old days, so many modern Emacs users are struggling with weird 'Emacs chords' on their Windows/IBM keyboards.
If one would design a keyboard that is entirely focused on the needs of Emacs users - how would it look like?
I assume the following:
the standard keybindings of Emacs are accepted, redefinitions are rare exceptions
we are only talking about QWERTY keyboards (including regional variations like QWERTZ)
we are only considering users applying the (10 fingers) touch typing system.
the question is not only about remapping the keys of existing keyboards (perfectly possible on Linux with .xmodmap and on Windows with keytweak, for example) - think about the perfect keyboard-hardware you would like to see on your desk while hacking in Emacs all day long.
Please tag your answer with your locale, i.e. [en] or [de], so that everybody knows what regional layout you are using. I will answer my own question below, to show you the results of some investigation and experimentation, but I really would like to read about different approaches and their pro's and con's. The emacswiki has a somehow related page with a lot of links (http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/RepeatedStrainInjury), but here it's about optimal keyboard design for maximal productivity, assuming avoidance of RSI as a byproduct.
