nyerm

I’ve been an Emacs user for years. My brain is rather hopelessly cross-wired with complicated control key combinations for invoking text-editing functions, everything from the common (C-a for beginning of the current line) to the obscure (C-x, Enter, f to change the text coding system of the current document).

Unfortunately, I also use Windows applications extensively, and they use a completely different set of hotkeys. I’ve managed to partially lobotomize Word into thinking it’s Emacs with a few macros and key customizations (like C-a for beginning of line), but some things are impossible (like anything having a C-x prefix). I have to make a conscious effort to switch myself out of Emacs mode and into Word mode before I start typing, or I end up doing very strange things to my documents. For example, Ctrl+A in Word and Notepad doesn’t go to beginning of line, it selects all the text in the current document, which is potentially disastrous.

XKeymacs might solve some of my problems. It’s a taskbar application that intercepts key input and translates it, with reasonable success, into its equivalent in Windows applications. For example, C-s (Emacs search) invokes the Find command in Notepad and Word (normally Ctrl+F) instead of Save, and C-x C-s invokes Save as I’m used to in Emacs. XKeymacs has a few dozen little check boxes full of settings to turn on and off (mostly individual control- and meta-key combinations), and you can set it not to be active in certain applications if that interferes too much with their regular operation. After a brief tour of its settings, it looks like you can completely remap your keyboard if you want to, meaning that hardcore Unix geeks who are used to DEC keyboards with the Ctrl key in the “proper” place (where Caps Lock is on most PC keyboards) can move it there.

It’s just beginning to dawn on me what a paradigm-shifting piece of software this could be for me. I realized a few sentences ago that I’d already instinctively started using Emacs cursor commands while writing this blog entry in Windows Mozilla Firebird, which normally uses Windows editing hotkeys in a browser text area control. I’m hooked, and I’ve had the program installed for less than half an hour.