typity typity type

[jazzfish]

rbandrews: You are obviously very picky particular about the tools you use for typing.

Yeah, I very much am.

I can't write longhand for crap. My brain moves faster than the pencil does and I end up not being able to read half of what I write. My folks got a computer when I was five and by about the age of ten it was the greatest thing to have ever happened to me. When I typed things, people weren't constantly bitching about my handwriting: they were reading what I wrote.

(My eighth-grade English teacher despised typing and computers, and very nearly failed me for, among other things, turning in "spelling" homework that had been typed instead of handwritten. I know, I know, "tucker fail english that's unpossible!" This is how.)

In addition, writing papers for class over the last ten years taught me that I write well in fits and starts. "Outline" the whole thing, write a sentence that's going to need expanded to a paragraph or two and skip to the next bit. Occasionally go back and fill in parts when I feel like it. I do a hell of a lot of jumping around in any given document.

You'd think scrollbars (later, a scrollwheel) and a mouse would go well with this writing style. Truth is, I never got on well with the mouse. It's always felt like an extraneous tool, something that gets in the way of typing. Even the kickass trackball requires me to stop typing so I can start trackballin'. Laptop trackpads are better (closer to the keys) but less precise, so there's more fumbling and zooming and trying to aim the thing. I seek out keyboard shortcuts wherever I can, just to avoid having to move my arm off the keys.

Those keyboard shortcuts are as much a part of "writing" as the locations of the keys. I never learned how to type the "right" way; my fingers just know where the keys are. I've been known to type whole sentences without looking at the screen, just because I can. Same with the keyboard shortcuts, with navigating through the document (CTRL+arrow to jump words, SHIFT to select, etc).

Breaking those shortcuts causes me no end of frustration. Take Neo, for instance. I have an awful lot of trouble just plain writing with it because the meta-keys for navigating aren't quite where my fingers expect them to be, so I skip whole sections instead of just individual words, or accidentally jump to the start of the document. Or "Redo." Redo isn'tsomething I use very often but it's nice to have around at times. And it's not been standardized: some programs use CTRL+Y, some use SHIFT+CTRL+Z. I end up trying both, most times, in an effort to make it do what I want, and generally getting thrown out of whatever groove I was in.

Things that get in the way of making words go from brain to screen have no place in my writing life.

---

And having said all that, I acknowledge that I, like most humans, am spectacularly bad at understanding how I do things. So as I've been composing this entry, I've tried to pay attention to what keyboard commands I actually use, and what I would have to relearn to make "simple typing" as transparent as it is right now.

Some revelations:

• I can't tell how often I use Delete. On this keyboard I'm more likely to use Backspace because Delete is in a stupid place.
  
• I don't use End as much as I'd expected to. When I want to go to the end of a line, it's often either the last line in the document, or the last line in a section and there's a blank line or two after it, so I just hit "down left" because the arrow keys are closer than End to my hand.
  
• Home gets used more for "start of line" but I'll break out CTRL+Home for "top of document" more than I'd expected. That's probably about a 2:1 ratio.
  
• By far the most common way for me to navigate a document is with CTRL+left/right, often with SHIFT to delete or cut/paste whole gobs of text at once.
  
• I really like being able to SHIFT+CTRL+Left, CTRL+X to move the word I just typed. I like that I don't have to change meta keys to do it, and I like that I can use the two least-used fingers for the SHIFT+CTRL meta, leaving the other two free and fully mobile to hit X or C as needed. The index finger is less mobile if I'm using the thumb to hit a meta key, and much less so if I'm also pinning my pinky to SHIFT. Then I have to actually think about the key I'm hitting, especially if it's on the bottom row.
  
• PgUp/PgDn are mandatory, and ought to be single-key operations. This is unrelated to typing, though.

So. I know the Mac keyboard is fairly remappable. I'm not sure if it's worth going mac if I'm going to have to remap the keys on every Mac I ever use. And I'm not sure whether I can stand, say, having the key that's where PC ALT is as the standard meta key for the things I want to do and am used to using CTRL for.

Which I think means I need to spend some time with a Mac and see how crazy it drives me. I'm in no particular rush on this: if I get a laptop I'm waiting at least until the new ones come out in Oct/Nov; if I get a desktop I can't really use it until I get a new chair, which I'm not doing until after I move. So, sometime, and sometime soonish.

Comments

[rbandrews]

Emacs tutorials are generally bad. If you want, I can walk you through it some over AIM.

[jazzfish]

Having looked over it, I'm about at the conclusion that Emacs is more a lifestyle than an editor, and I don't think I need that drastic a lifestyle change. Not on top of a potential OS switch.