Should I start out learning emacs with ErgoEmacs?

Question

I am just beginning on emacs, and have just completed the tutorial. As a longtime Windows user (I am running emacs on Win7), the shortcuts do feel unintuitive, however I had expected that and was prepared to dedicate time to learning the commands.

However, I recently discovered the ErgoEmacs package, and I was wondering whether I should:

• start out with that, and then transition to normal shortcuts
• use ErgoEmacs 'forever'
• just stick with the normal bindings and then customize them as I see fit once my skills have improved?

Which of those options do you think would make me the most productive over many years of use?

Although I currently use Windows, I am looking to transition to Mac or Linux for daily usage within the next 12 months.

As a side note, would it be recommended for me to install the http://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit/? Would this conflict with ErgoEmacs at all?

My reason for using emacs is to try out Org-Mode, however I want to use it as my editor for everything in the near future, and probably other things like email, etc.

If anyone could help out with some configuration issues and help with setting up color-theme on Windows, that would be great too - http://superuser.com/questions/167110/how-to-use-emacs-color-theme-on-windows-and-help-with-the-emacs-emacs-d

Answer 1

I don't recommend starting out with ErgoEmacs.

I'd recommend starting out with vanilla Emacs. Give that a try to see if you like it. There has been a fair amount of thought put into the bindings, and the default ones are self-consistent and they behave consistently across the major modes. If you find that you are really unhappy with some bindings, then change them - either by loading features you find you like (ErgoEmacs, CUA mode, (shudder) Viper).

The way you become the most productive with it is to customize it to fit your needs. That can only come with time. I've used Emacs for 17 years now and am still customizing it to improve my workflow. It is naive to think that you'll become most productive with Emacs (or any tool) by simply adopting something like ErgoEmacs.

With respect to ErgoEmacs specifically, the key-bindings are probably easier for someone who has only used simple text editors or used editors with the mouse a lot. By overriding the C-c and C-x prefix maps, you lose access to a ton of functionality that you might not otherwise learn or know about. Additionally, by moving away from standard Emacs terminology, ErgoEmacs sets you up to communicate poorly with others in the Emacs community.

Also, by becoming comfortable with the default bindings for Emacs, you'll not find it as difficult to work in another person's environment when you have to.

ErgoEmacs is one person's opinion on how to be most comfortable with Emacs, you're welcome to use it. I feel it would be rather limiting and confining if you have the goal of being more than a novice user of Emacs.

Answer 2

I have not used ErgoEmacs. But there seem to be some testimonials to its effectiveness and also a fine-grained approach to partially adopting it. It seems to received some user-centered testing. It sounds compelling and I want to check it out myself.

With that said, as a many year veteran with Emacs with most of my time spent on the Windows version, I believe it is very beneficial to bite the bullet and learn the Emacs' quirky keys (eg. C-a, C-e, C-w) and key prefixes like C-x and C-c. (e.g when in Emacs, Paste like emacsers do). Despite being a very "configurable" editor, Emacs and major add-ons like org-mode have rigid conventions for bindings. Perhaps it is possible to change this behavior and it might even be easy, but this sounds like learning Emacs for the sake of Emacs.

Also learning the kill/yanking keys will help you when using bash/zsh shells and other old-school programs that welcome Emacs users by implementing compatible keystrokes. For example, M-y on zsh implements the multi yank (paste) functionality like Emacs.

I do have some of my bindings customized. I can't live without undo on C-z. I rebind C-q and C-l as my own prefix maps and put anything I want in there.

As far as org-mode itself is concerned, you will be TAB-ing a lot with the outline visibility, and pressing C-c C-c for context sensitive commands. I can't remember every little C-c based keystroke. So I recommend keeping the Menu bar available.

Answer 3

I think you may struggle to find people who have significant experience of both vanilla and Ergo Emacs, especially over many years of use. I'd never heard of the latter, myself, but I agree with piyo that it sounds very interesting, albeit not something that I think I'm ever likely to use -- I'm far too used to the standard keys by this point to want to change (which is why I think it may be hard to find people with much experience of both).

If ErgoEmacs really is a more ergonomic way to use Emacs, then there is a clear health benefit to using it, so sure, why not consider it for permanent use. Aside from the keybindings, the other changes seem to be focused on a more intuitive transition from other editors, but if you are intending to put in the effort of learning Emacs over many years, then it is less clear to me that there is much to be gained from this. Still, if the ErgoEmacs menus make useful features more visible, there may well be value in at least looking through them.

Like Trey, I suspect that using ErgoEmacs will make it a little harder to interact with the wider Emacs community. That can probably be mitigated by ensuring that you are aware of what ErgoEmacs changes compared to vanilla Emacs, so that you can translate between the two (again, I see the possible ergonomic benefits of ErgoEmacs as the main advantage, so it might be worth the additional learning in order to retain that).

Answer 4

I disagree with these comments. I've been using Emacs for a mere 15 years, but I moved to the ErgoEmacs keys (haven't used the Windows Binary that they ship) when I developed emacs pinky. The Emacs interface is terrible. Some of that is historical, and some of it is just bad ideas (movement keys should be laid out spatially, not according to their first letter). I don't think ErgoEmacs is perfect, but its a lot lot better. Its also been very well thought out. The Yank/Kill functionality gives you the full power of Emacs (well mostly, but nobody sane can use the parts left out), but provides a saner interface to it. He's also done a good job of overloading some functions so that they do the right thing according to context (capitalisation, remove white spaces, and another one).

I've customised it a little bit for my purposes (its Emacs. That's what its for), and I disabled the C-c/x/v stuff, as I was happy just using M-c/x/v for those. CUA seems to work fine now, but why risk it?

The other thing I'd recommend is moving the ctrl key so that its next to the Alt key. Preferably you should have an Alt and ctrl key on either side of the space bar. This will make a big difference to your hands.

Answer 5

Short answer is "no". Your premise is that you've already decided to commit time to learning Emacs. ErgoEmacs premise is two-fold: it's supposedly more ergonomic, and it's supposedly simpler and more modern and thus appealing to a broader base of users.

The former is a tricky claim. It's easy to say that something is more ergonomic, actually delivering on that is hard. In the case of Emacs, the tried and true way to go ergonomic is a programmer keyboard such as Kinesis combined with dual footpads (one for Meta and one for Control), thus obviating the need for most multi-finger combinations. People like myself have 20+ years experience with that combination.

Their second premise is to reach a broader audience, which isn't applicable to you.

Answer 6

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned remapping CAPS LOCK to CTRL. That felt better to me, but I already knew some commands. It doesn't avoid emacs pinky, but if you play guitar you might notice some spillover benefits from pinky strength and dexterity!