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+1 It's been ages since I last tried Emacs but one of the main reasons it didn't resonate with me was the constant hand contortions required for key chords. I'm pretty sure I tried evil mode as well. Projects such as Combobulate, Vertico, etc. being mentioned in this thread weren't around back then and seem intriguing. Curious to learn about any other projects or workarounds that help with ergonomics.

Rebind Capslock to act as Ctrl when held and Esc when pressed, use a modal editing package like evil or meow. There's also devil-mode which does some smart heuristics on your semicolon so you can press it instead of holding Ctrl or Meta (Alt).

That's pretty much it without delving too much into specifics, it's important to note that most of Emacs' functionality can be called via M-x (the original command palette) and selected or searched for easily. No need to play piano with hard to remember key chords for rarely used stuff.

I type Dvorak and I use the opposite modifier key to whichever key I want to modify. So, for example, for Control+A I would hold the right control key and press a. Aside from that, an active hobby with plenty of stretching and strengthening for the entire body.

No need to be fast with Emacs. You can just input chords with two hands.

But I’ve remapped caps to control and use the side of my pinky instead. My hands are big though.

I'm using a QMK split keyboard, remap the Left Space key as Ctrl key so that I can press it with my left thumb finger.

r/emacs on Reddit has many discussions about this.

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I’m sorry to inform you that it is perfectly possible. When I encounter a system which has a completely stock and unconfigured Emacs, I generally only modify one or two settings, and then I’m perfectly happy to use it in that state. I’ve used Emacs for 30 years, and I still use it heavily every day.

I have a 1200+ lines of config, but they’re mostly nice-to-haves and full-blown apps. But I can do fine with vanilla if needed. My EDITOR is mg which is barest than bare emacs.

Also, vanilla emacs have full support for customize, so I can just go there to quicly setup settings. The reason my config is huge is because I dislike customize and prefer setting options via code.

One of the sharpest people I know—he's a professor and hacks on the LLVM for a living—uses stock Emacs in the terminal with no discernible customization.

Linus Torvalds lives in pretty much vanilla microemacs.

People have been doing this since the 70s :)

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