Re: one key-press to comment out lines of code?

[Emanuel Berg]

Dale Snell <ddsnell@frontier.com> writes:

> Heh, yeah, the old terminals had keys wandering all
> over the place.  Every manufacturer had a different
> idea of where things like escape, |, \, `, ~, and so
> on belonged.  Sometimes they would change their minds
> from one model to the next.  As I recall, the DEC
> VT-101 that I learned Emacs on had the escape key
> where the /~ usually is now.  The `/~ key was between
> the =/+ and backspace keys, and the |/\ key was to
> the right of the return key.  (An awful place.  One
> had to be careful if one used those characters.)

Cool. I found the old exchange:

YT:

... was the Escape key placed anywhere else than it is
on today's keyboards? The reason I ask is - well, just
try hitting a couple of familiar shortcuts, but instead
of Meta, use Escape. I think it would take a master at
the accordion to be productive using that.

Bob Proulx:

Yes.  The escape key has been located in other
locations.  Here is an example.  On the HP HIL keyboard
it was left of the left shift key.  (Also note that
control was left of the A.)  A good keyboard layout for
the touch typist.  Everything was relatively close to
the home row.

http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=575

Mostly escape has been located in the upper left
"somewhere".  Although not always left of the 1 key.

>> But perhaps you re-routed Esc for Caps Lock?
>
> No, I swapped control for caps-lock, putting the
> control key next to the A key, where it's much more
> accessible.

Yeah, I've heard a lot of people doing that. I actually
think left control is kind of close and good for the
left little finger. Caps-lock is better, yes, but is it
better enough to make it worthwhile to re-learn? Don't
know.

> Since I seldom use the caps-lock function, it doesn't
> bother me that said key was relegated to the second
> most inconvenient place on the keyboard.

I have an Emacs-only software solution for upper-case
only mode (which I get with <M-caps>). It is based on
caps-mode.el but I put some changes there, namely it
maps dashes to underscores, and, it disables itself on
a non-alphanumeric (or dash/underscore) keystroke
(i.e., most often a whitespace).

It works great in Emacs but I wish I could get it in
zsh as well. There is still the acronyms (e.g., URL),
and even more so the non-computer files (README) and
environmentals (HOME), and I'd like a caps-lock for
that.

Instead I bring up the buffer-menu (files only) on the
caps-lock key (only) in Emacs, and once there, an
additional stroke of caps-lock brings up all files. So
I can toggle all I want. Pretty clever! But there
should be one million things to do with the caps-lock
key that is more sensible than changing the case...

> (The most inconvenient position, imnsho, is the right
> control key.  Next to the left arrow key.  Ugh.)

Agreed. I actually don't have it. To the right of the
space bar, I have "Alt Graph" (which is Meta as well,
it seems), then a key with a solid diamond (seems to be
escape), and then "Compose Key" which doesn't seem to
do anything. (I actually have the compose key somewhere
else.) But: why are those keys so inconvenient? What's
stopping from using them as the control and Meta on the
left side? They are just one centimeter too far to the
right and that does it.

-- 
underground experts united:
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573