Ng Pheng Siong writes:
> Going a little off-topic: I'm beginning to suspect Emacs is bad for my
> health. To work with Lisp I switched to Emacs after being a Vim user for
> many years. I started in May this year. Already I've switched my shells and
> other readline apps to emacs mode.
>
> Recently I'm feeling a little funny in my left thumb, which is what I use
> to press the M key (== the Alt key, next to the space bar).
>
> I've read others complain about their little left fingers, which is what
> they use to press the M key which they map to capslock.
>
> I've never had any problem with Vim.
>
> Then again, it may just be advancing age. ;-\
I am a long-time emacs user and I found some similar problems. I
ended up buying a special ergo keyboard from Kinesis that helped a
lot. This keyboard puts the space bar, meta, and control keys INSIDE
the key blocks, rather than outside:
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/
Look for the contoured keyboards (annoyingly, because their website
uses some pukey menu and include files, I can't just point you at the
product directly; what is with web designers these days?).
This means that the control and meta keys, which you hit a lot (as
well as the space and backspace keys) are now being pressed by your
thumbs, which are strong, instead of requiring a long reach by your
pinkies, which are weak, and whose reach causes potential carpal
tunnel-damaging stress.
The good news is that the keyboard helped a lot and, contrary to what
you might expect, didn't take appreciable training time (I was typing
again at full speed w/in two days).
The bad news is that it was very expensive!
Oh, yes, if you're thinking of getting one, the foot pedals seem like
a total waste of money. I could never coordinate my feet and hands.
That's too bad because the shift modifier was still not in the
internal bock.
