Curious to see this at the very top of your list. Perhaps I should make my switch to Sway rather sooner than later. Thank you for the endorsement!
For me it was a lot off wrist pain, so switching to a more keyboard centric way of interacting with the WM was very impactful.
I intend to learn this with the alt keyboard layout after the more ergonomic split keyboard has arrived. Wish me good luck 😉!
Which alternate layout are you considering? I recommend grabbing something you typed and feeding it here to check heat map of keypresses you would have done to have some visual representation of your usage.
So I suppose that by effectively removing most need for a mouse, the switch to a trackball has been less impactful.
Bingo, I actually switched to trackball before going to keyboard centric WM, but after it I’ve even gone back to mouse a few times feeling almost no difference, because I end up using the mouse a lot less.
Btw, perhaps related, would you happen to be aware of hints? If so, could you touch upon its relevance?
I have, not exactly it but similar stuff, I used to use a browser called conkeror that had emacs key bindings, and have tried to learn a very similar system to hints in the past. Honestly, when I has lots of wrist pain they were useful to completely remove the need of a mouse, but they’re clunky and not as efficient as a pointer so I tend not to use them.
Curious. Is this a special ergonomic chair (or something)?
Nope, just a Secret Lab Titan Evo, but any good chair would do, I spent a year with a cheap Amazon chair and had lots of back pain.
Did you advance/progress in increments because you were testing out the latest addition to the setup? And thus, only introduced a subsequent change after judging that you were not ‘done’ yet?
It was more of a gradual thing, I had wrist pain, so I switched to a trackball, that helped but didn’t got rid of it. So I tried AwesomeWM, found Conkeror and slowly the pain started to fade away and I dove deep into the keyboard centric thing learning touch typing and Colemak. Eventually other issues came on, like pinky strain from Emacs, or a different kind of wrist pain from a small keyboard that made me switch to a split one, or back pain that made me invest in a good chair. I don’t think my setup is “done”, it adapts to whatever my body is asking, but I’ve started to listen carefully and switch stuff on the early signals because that first wrist pain was an eye opener on how bad things can get if you ignore them.
I am so glad to read this! While the journey until I am able to interact with my systems without any pain seems far away right now, success stories like yours make me so pumped to pull through.
Do you feel pain now though? If so what? You should address that immediately. At most points I would have answered that I felt no pain with my setup, because those things build up gradually, if you’re at the point of feeling pain the time to take action is now.
About the emacs plugins, yeah, by the name I can tell you those do the same to the ones I cited, my point is that the plugin ecosystem for it might be a bit less extensive, and not sure how to set shortcuts that use vim key bindings for other plugins.
I would only try out Emacs or Neovim through a opinionated config.
Why? Having had an emacs config that I copied from somewhere and ended up growing and becoming something unmanageable, I’m have a very strong opinion that one should build your own config files from scratch to know them. Presets are good if you’re going to be using them bare, but if you’re going to customize them they can get in the way. And that’s another point for Nvim for me, their configs are very easy, I followed this guide and had a working config that I could easily expand in no time.
org-mode FTW
Ah, I miss org-mode, it’s too bad the world went with Markdown instead.
Granted, I’m still very much enjoying Emacs. But, I shouldn’t disregard/dismiss Neovim any longer. It’s time to revisit this rabbit hole 😂.
Meh, maybe, maybe not, Emacs is great, I just never would have gone with evil mode, it sort of feels like it defeats the purpose of both emacs and vim in my mind for some reason. It’s like if someone told you they put a Ford engine on their Chevrolet, it feels convoluted and strange to think on that solution before thinking of using a Ford.
For me it was a lot off wrist pain, so switching to a more keyboard centric way of interacting with the WM was very impactful.
Which alternate layout are you considering? I recommend grabbing something you typed and feeding it here to check heat map of keypresses you would have done to have some visual representation of your usage.
Bingo, I actually switched to trackball before going to keyboard centric WM, but after it I’ve even gone back to mouse a few times feeling almost no difference, because I end up using the mouse a lot less.
I have, not exactly it but similar stuff, I used to use a browser called conkeror that had emacs key bindings, and have tried to learn a very similar system to hints in the past. Honestly, when I has lots of wrist pain they were useful to completely remove the need of a mouse, but they’re clunky and not as efficient as a pointer so I tend not to use them.
Nope, just a Secret Lab Titan Evo, but any good chair would do, I spent a year with a cheap Amazon chair and had lots of back pain.
It was more of a gradual thing, I had wrist pain, so I switched to a trackball, that helped but didn’t got rid of it. So I tried AwesomeWM, found Conkeror and slowly the pain started to fade away and I dove deep into the keyboard centric thing learning touch typing and Colemak. Eventually other issues came on, like pinky strain from Emacs, or a different kind of wrist pain from a small keyboard that made me switch to a split one, or back pain that made me invest in a good chair. I don’t think my setup is “done”, it adapts to whatever my body is asking, but I’ve started to listen carefully and switch stuff on the early signals because that first wrist pain was an eye opener on how bad things can get if you ignore them.
Do you feel pain now though? If so what? You should address that immediately. At most points I would have answered that I felt no pain with my setup, because those things build up gradually, if you’re at the point of feeling pain the time to take action is now.
About the emacs plugins, yeah, by the name I can tell you those do the same to the ones I cited, my point is that the plugin ecosystem for it might be a bit less extensive, and not sure how to set shortcuts that use vim key bindings for other plugins.
Why? Having had an emacs config that I copied from somewhere and ended up growing and becoming something unmanageable, I’m have a very strong opinion that one should build your own config files from scratch to know them. Presets are good if you’re going to be using them bare, but if you’re going to customize them they can get in the way. And that’s another point for Nvim for me, their configs are very easy, I followed this guide and had a working config that I could easily expand in no time.
Ah, I miss org-mode, it’s too bad the world went with Markdown instead.
Meh, maybe, maybe not, Emacs is great, I just never would have gone with evil mode, it sort of feels like it defeats the purpose of both emacs and vim in my mind for some reason. It’s like if someone told you they put a Ford engine on their Chevrolet, it feels convoluted and strange to think on that solution before thinking of using a Ford.