Introduction
"Emacs Pinky" is a condition where you feel pain in one or both of
your pinky fingers from using Emacs. This is because Emacs requires
you to hold [Ctrl]
to do anything other than inserting text. On
most keyboards, [Ctrl]
is pressed with the pinky, so this causes a
lot of stress.
What can you do about this though? Switch to Vim? You'll have to learn a new set of key bindings and throw away all your customizations! It will be awful!
pinky-mode to the rescue! pinky-mode is a minor mode which lets you
use most common navigation commands without touching [Ctrl]
. It is
inspired by command mode in Vim. Once activated, just use the letter
keys to navigate your buffer. For example, press n instead of C-n
to
move to the next line. This lets you keep using your muscle memory!
See the full list of key bindings below. Press i to leave pinky-mode
and go back to inserting text.
When pinky-mode is active, the cursor color will change, and
"Pinky" will be shown in the mode line. You can customize the cursor
color with M-x customize-group RET pinky RET
.
pinky-mode works with window-number to switch between windows in the same frame. Just tap a number key to go to any window.
Installation:
Once the pinky-mode package is installed, add this to your .emacs:
(require 'pinky-mode)
You will need to bind pinky-mode-activate to something you can
press easily. I use the key-chord package to bind this to jk
(press j
and k
at the same time). This is entirely up to you
though.
(require 'key-chord)
(key-chord-mode 1)
(key-chord-define-global "jk" 'pinky-mode-activate)
To force yourself to learn pinky-mode, consider disabling the normal key bindings for navigation.
(pinky-unbind-normal-keys)
List of key bindings
Key | Function |
---|---|
|
set-mark-command |
, |
beginning-of-buffer |
. |
end-of-buffer |
a |
move-beginning-of-line |
b |
backward-char |
c |
switch-to-buffer |
d |
delete-char |
e |
move-end-of-line |
f |
forward-char |
g |
goto-line |
i |
pinky-mode-deactivate |
k |
kill-line |
m |
scroll-down-command |
n |
next-line |
o |
open-line |
p |
previous-line |
r |
isearch-backward |
s |
isearch-forward |
u |
undo |
v |
scroll-up-command |
w |
kill-ring-save |
x |
exchange-point-and-mark |
y |
yank |
0 -9 |
window-number-select |