[krylon]

> every time I've tried to spend serious time in Emacs over the past 30 years on a PC or Mac keyboard, I've ended up with stabbing pains in my wrists within a week

I used to think "emacs pinky" was a joke, but it is real. Eventually I learned how to re-map Caps Lock to be a Ctrl-key (I never used Caps Lock anyway), and Caps Lock is far more comfortable to reach with my pinky than either of the regular Ctrl-keys.

[TeMPOraL]

Yup. Remapping Caps Lock is kind of a shibboleth for Vim/Emacs users. Emacs users remap to CTRL; I hear Vim users remap to ESC.

[azernik]

Vim users do indeed. I still get a bit of ESC pinky, but not nearly as bad as the default layout would cause.

[krylon]

Wouldn't you hit ESC with your ring finger or middle finger instead? (When I used vim, I preferred Ctrl-C so I would not have to move my fingers so far.)

[azernik]

That would require lifting my hand off the home row, which would be uncomfortable on my wrists. Playing around with it now, the motion seems to be more of a sideswipe, with a bit of muscle tone to keep the finger from just bending out of the way.

Side note - I've noticed a big improvement in general hand pain since I got into climbing regularly, and specifically starting working with a hand exerciser.

[krylon]

I sometimes wonder who came up with the idea for Caps Lock anyway. I cannot remember ever using that key except by accident.

[azernik]

Because you got me curious enough to look this up:

It apparently originates from typewriters, when holding shift was quite physically taxing (since it literally shifted all the typeheads over to put alternate characters over the ribbon); so caps lock saved a lot of finger strain when typing acronyms or writing symbol-heavy text.

[krylon]

Thank you! It is kind of fascinating how much legacy from the typewriter era modern keyboard carry with them.

[Pete_D]

I like mapping jk to ESC for vim/evil-mode, then swapping caps lock and CTRL for the comfy tmux and readline ergonomics. (I've tried readline's vi mode, but I didn't like it.)