god-mode

if you do decide to give it a try, and are coming from vim, i've had a good experience with https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode as a way to kind of bridge the gap into modal editing

The god-mode minor mode that is linked is also mind-boggling: https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode

https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode spc-x

And the alternative for people like me, who just want to avoid too much Ctrl pressing sometimes, without fully comitting to the "mode" experience, is god-mode[1]. While you enable it (usually by pressing Esc), Ctrl is "assumed" to be always pressed, so saving a file becomes "x s" (though when I am on Mac, I always map Cmd+S to save - and many other Cmd key based shortcuts that I used in every other app - thanks to emacs built-in shortcuts almost never using the Cmd key as it was designed for Unix). It made using emacs much more enjoyable for me. [1] https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode

I agree with what you said, but would suggest also using the god-mode package. With that, when you hit Esc, you enter "command mode" (hit Esc again to exit it) so most keys you press will be treated as "Ctrl-<key>". So instead of holding Ctrl pressed all the time, you just hit some keys (npbfae) to move around... and search is just "s". Most vim users would just use evil-mode but for the rest of us this is a good compromise and once you get used to it, it avoids the pinkies very well. https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode

Another option to trigger functions are vim-inspired leader key sequences such as god mode [1] and the evil leader implementations in spacemacs and doomemacs, for example [2]. [1] https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode [2] https://discourse.doomemacs.org/t/what-are-leader-and-locall...

2 stripe blue belt here! I used to use Vim for everything other than Java development and have now adopted Emacs in the same way. I am using it for Clojure and Common Lisp development along with org mode, irc, rss, git and file management I started with Evil mode and then moved to Xah fly keys before sticking to the emacs bindings. Having the caps lock key bound to CTRL helped me a lot. I don't know if it makes that much of a difference for Emacs but using the DVORAK layout has helped my fingers There are other bindings you can try like Meow or God mode but I don't know what the adoption rate is like for them. Emacs gives you the flexibility to set it up as you please. As others have mentioned, there may be other keyboard options that might be more helpful as well https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil http://xahlee.info/emacs/misc/xah-fly-ke

Reminds me of god-mode: https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode. Although I use Evil, it still comes in handy on occasion when I need to type something without an Evil keybind. Alas, it’s been abandoned, though it still seems to work for me on the rare occasions I need it.

There's active development of god-mode still though[0]. Mentioned elsewhere here, I've found meow[1] to be really interesting/good. And it leverages some of what makes god-mode nice (from their list of key features: "Minimizes modifier usage (e.g. `SPC x f` for `C-x C-f`) inspired by god-mode") [0]: https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode/commits/master [1]: https://github.com/meow-edit/meow

I used to use emacs-evil but found myself having to remember both vim and emacs keybindings. That may be my own fault since I probably wasn't using ALL the settings / extra packages that make vim keybindings work everywhere. I've since switched to god-mode [0], which just turns emacs keybindings into modal ones. I find it works quite well. I think emacs keybindings are easier to remember but harder to use. Turning them modal solved that for me. (For example, Ctrl + F for forward, Ctrl + B for backward is easy to remember, but hjkl is right by your fingertips). Side-note, it looks like god-mode was archived and then made part of the emacs orphanage. I started using it years after it was archived before it was part of the emacs orphanage. Noticed no issues, since again all it does is just make emacs keybindings modal. [0]: https://github.co

To build on what others are saying about Emacs, if you start exploring the package ecosystem, you're going to see quite a lot of really interesting packages that are related to improving/experimenting with the UX of editing text. While I'm not endorsing anyone in particular, I think what this list does show is just how easy it is to do pretty much whatever you want in Emacs; https://karthinks.com/software/avy-can-do-anything/ https://github.com/jyp/boon https://github.com/clemera/objed https://github.com/jmorag/kakoune.el https://github.com/meow-edit/meow/ https://github.com/xahlee/xah-fly-keys https://github.com/Kungsgeten/ryo-modal https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode Emacs 29 also now has treesitter and LSP mode integration built-in, a compilation mode, a comint mode for REPLs, excellent file browsing packages (I use dired/dirvis

I remap CapsLock to Esc and use that as my toggle key in god-mode: https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode This makes the Ctrl sticky, thus emulating the modal behavior of vim, but using emacs bindings. It also has some clever escape sequences that let you input complex chords without ever having to press more than one button at a time. I have gotten so used to it that I have started looking into a way to make a solution that is global across my whole system (Linux). So far I can emulate some of the behaviour using something like kmonad (https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad) although some things like repeated keystrokes cannot easily be expressed using the configuration language and requires a more low-level approach.

In emacs there are a few alternative modal editing modes I've been wanting to try. https://github.com/Kungsgeten/ryo-modal https://github.com/jyp/boon https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode