Published 2025-09-13
tag(s): #overblown-minor-annoyances #emacs #useless-facts
Remember when I said I was too lazy to change my browser? And when I said I shouldn't buy more keyboard crap?
At least I never said I shouldn't change a bunch of major Emacs bindings in one go...
Is this what growing old is? Something works mostly the way you want it to, so you put up with it?
Well, maybe I am not that old![1] Because the weekend after
writing that post, I was already using Vivaldi.
I do have a bit of guilt about not supporting the one alternative browser engine, but at the
least the mobile experience is already better in Vivaldi. And the desktop has a few other
things going for it, too.
I was thinking of using Vivaldi Notes to replace Fastmail's note taking feature. The main
reason being, Vivaldi can update notes offline and then sync them - Fastmail's app couldn't,
but they just added support for offline updates.
I haven't tried it yet, to confirm it works OK.
I use the notes for links that I capture on the go, and to store post ideas. Neither can be edited from Emacs using an API, although Gnus can access Fastmail's notes via IMAP and with some care, you are able to edit & add new notes.
In a footnote of the
"First world
keyboard problems" post, I said: Get my fix of novelty without generating
garbage...
.
Look, in my defense, I want you all to know that I gave away a lot of keycaps I didn't use,
and even keyboards that were retired, in the last year. (This is how you know I did, in
fact, get a few new things...)
About two years ago I started
using Kailh
Box Black, which made me fall in love with linear switches.
BUT I wanted something heavier.
I saw online a couple recommendations for
the Hako Royal Pink, and got a set. These
are tactile (I confused them with other listing...). But I liked them enough to keep them,
while I kept looking for the heaviest linear switch ever.
Yes, I do want "the heaviest linear switch ever". But I am NOT disassembling
70 or so switches to change their springs (or lubricate them, for that matter). Whatever I am
using has the do what I like right out of the box.
No, seriously. Stop tempting me. Stop, I said...GET THOSE TOOLS AWAY FROM
ME...AHHHHHHH.[2]
Ah, yes. I was not really looking but kinda curious about a really heavy linear
switch and I found
the Kailh
Speed Pro Heavy Berry.
They are what I am using now, and I absolutely love them. It took a bit of
time for the break-in period, but they are now buttery-smooth, not scratchy, and they feel
wonderful.
For two years too, I've been using a set of POM Jelly blank keycaps, Cherry profile, that you might have seen in pictures of my keyboard before. Such as this one:
You can tell I put some keycaps upside down: the ones that in most sets are convex.
Because if I put them correctly, my thumb hurts from hitting the side of the key sideways.
Well, I've been looking for lower profile keycaps, and the one thing stopping me was whether
the sets had enough oddly-sized keycaps to cover the 4-key spacebar in the Raise (even if I
had to use some of the keys upside down).
And now...
These aren't translucent. And the legends aren't even printed that nicely, to be honest. But of course after using blanks for so long, I really don't look at the keys.
What I feel I have achieved with the combo of the switches and keycaps, is a
perfect[3] mix of a laptop keyboard (my personal laptop's in particular is
pretty great), but with the feedback of a mechanical keyboard.
I loooove clicky switches, and adore the look of super
tall SA
profile keycaps.
But I type like shit on the former, and the latter are not good for my fingers. This feels
awesome. Looks OK. Some day I will get xvx translucent keycaps. 😌
For a while now I had an inconsistency that was bothering me immensely.
I have two "big" personal keymaps in Emacs. F6 was the first one (way way back, I
used the Context Menu key). It had commands that I wanted to recall quickly.
Eventually, F5 showed up, with bindings dedicated to my "register
system".[4]
Except that hoagie-register-keymap was eventually renamed
to hoagie-second-keymap, because of all the crap I added to it...
In a few cases, it was because the mnemonic key for a command was already in use in one, or
the other.
In other cases it was because their activation keys sit in opposite sides of the keyboard, so
it made sense to use the opposite hand for key sequences[5].
The thing is, sometimes I couldn't remember where I had assigned a command because there was
no clear logic. At all. I mean, it helped me see that some commands don't "deserve" a binding,
just M-x them instead. But still!
So today I had a bit of time at the computer and decided to re-organize it all. I had a
choice of doing everything ergonomic and use always opposite hands for the
bindings. Or pick based on some logic, and adjust the bindings later, but always keeping the
theme I used for each keymap.
The keymap that is under my left thumb, is for small, quick, purely text-editing
commands. Examples of the things I have there
are duplicate-line, hoagie-toggle-backslash
and kill-whole-line.
The secondary keymap (where normal people would have the enter key, so right pinky), is
for window management, toggling things, LSP. Examples
are ediff-buffers, multi-occur-in-matching-buffers
and hoagie-occur-symbol-or-region.
Finally, I am following the manual's advice and using the sequences C-c LETTER
for some other personal bindings. Mostly for menu-like things like
my find
commands keymap. But a few other things too, like EWW.
Oh, and now the registers keymap lives in C-z.
Will I love this change, or revert the configuration by Monday noon? No clue. Writing this post was a quick test, but things will get real only when I work using these keybindings for a few hours.
That was a lot.
kill-ring. Built on top of standard registers.