Learning a new keyboard layout - Norman
This is an account of a time when I overhauled my dev environment.
I switched to:
- Norman, an optimized alternative to QWERTY
- StumpWM, a tiling window manager
- Doom Emacs, an OS with a decent built-in text editor
I’ve recently made the following changes:
Move from xfce to StumpWM
Move from Qwerty to Norman
Move from vanilla Emacs to Doom Emacs with Evil-mode (Vim bindings)
Norman
If I’m lucky enough to get to spend tens of thousands of more hours hacking away at code, investment in ergonomics and efficiency should pay well.
I have considered that training in things that are too outside the norm may be counter-productive; I don’t want to be useless when not at my own personal workstation.
But it would be irresponsible to never venture out.
StumpWM
Instead of using the default window manager that I installed with Manjaro, I’m making the switch to a tiling window manager. I chose StumpWM because it was written in Common Lisp, a language I want more chances to use.
Changing window managers has the added benefit that I get to learn about how pieces of a desktop experience fit together. For example, I learned what a compositor is.
My understanding is that an operating system provides some area of memory onto which physical monitors, called “heads”, are mapped. A window manager detects the layout of these heads and draws the windows in certain locations of memory. Those locations in memory subsequently manifest as locations visually displayed by your monitor.
Neither the windows themselves nor the window manager are responsible for effects like shadows or transparency. That’s the responsibility of the compositor.
Another piece of a typical desktop that I need to choose is a screen lock. I’ll probably go with slock for that, combined with xautolock for locking automatically when afk.
Doom Emacs
For a long time, I valued being effective in a bare-minimum environment. I didn’t want to lean too heavily on custom configuration and tooling. I wanted to be proficient in the largest number of environments, such as my personal Mac/Windows/Linux workstations to SSHing into servers to pair programming on someone else's machine.
But why? Where does one stop? Why not use a more primitive editor, like Vim or even Ed. Why should it just apply to editors? I’m already reliant on so many tools and software for which I’m happy to let others have already worked out the most commonly accepted configs.
I don’t even have any quantification for how long it will take to learn Doom and Vim’s bindings to a level of proficiency equivalent to my current setup, so I’m not really qualified to know the cost/payoff and the easiest way to find it is to experience it.
Notes
The rest of this text will be reference notes to help me learn my new environment (and re-learn it if this silly idea gets back-burnered for another day).
I also hope it can serve as a helpful reference for others.
Progress
I’ll update this to track progress.
It will be hard to quantify the effect this has on my development speed in the long term. In the short term, it sure as hell has ground it to a halt. The cognitive overhead of what should be the simplest of actions is overwhelming and makes it very difficult to focus on any actual writing of code.
At least I’m enjoying the process.
The change to Norman can be tracked easily with a typing test.
A 1-minute sentence typing test at https://www.typingtest.com/ has me at 32 WPM using Norman. I immediately followed that with another test using Qwerty and got 62 WPM. It was extremely difficult to switch. I gave up trying to type Qwerty on my Ergodox and did the Qwerty test on my laptop’s keyboard. After a few more minutes re-familiarizing myself with Qwerty, I was up around 85 WPM.
The next section will be a reference for some config, shortcuts, and keybindings.
Doom
The number one thing I learned about learning Emacs, and this applies to many other things, is to not trust the documentation and tutorials and to not get frustrated when something you read doesn't work. Just go to the source. If an Emacs key binding that is mentioned in some docs doesn't work, just use ctrl-h k to describe the key and see what it is bound to and ctrl-h f to describe the function that you are trying to use.
You’ll first want to perform some config.
Locate and open Doom’s private config files with SPC f p.
Set your name and email in .doom.d/config.el.
Enable some modules in ~./doom/d/init.el. Doom doesn’t enable a project tree viewer by default, so find and uncomment either neotree or treemacs. Evil has its own multiple cursor functionality, but I’ve heard multiple-cursorsbehaves more similarly to what one would expect from an editor like Sublime or Atom.
After enabling any new module, you’ll need to run ~./.emacs.d/bin/doom syncand then you might also be able to get away with a SPC h r r to do a doom/reload rather than restarting all of Emacs. High-level shortcuts
Leader SPC. Press and wait for a minibuffer display of available sequences.
Files SPC f
Search SPC s
Windows SPC w
Workspaces SPC TAB
Buffers SPC b
Projects SPC p
Nav [ and ]
Navigate forward one “section” (paragraph) in the buffer ] ]
Backward to previous buffer [ b
Previous open paren { (
etc…
Folding z. Commands vary by minor mode.
SPC m Local leader. Bindings dependent on major mode.
Misc
Doom gives you isolated and persistent workspaces, collections of named windows and buffers. I think this is done through the persp-mode package. VIM refresher
These bindings aren’t specific to Doom. If you use vim, you’ll find them familiar. In Emacs, they come from evil-mode.
ESC Cancel mode, move back up to normal mode.
Insert
i
I Activate insert at beginning of current line.
a Append after cursor.
A Insert at end of current line.
o Append blank line below.
O Blank line above.
cc Replace an entire line.
c change from cursor through move command (word, sentence, etc…)
CTRL-r * to insert the contents of the clipboard while in insert mode. (CTRL-r " for the last yank)
Highlighting
v Activate visual mode. Used for highlighting/selecting.
CTRL-v Visual block mode
V linewise visual mode
Cut/Copy/Paste
y Yank (copy)
yy yank a line
p Paste after.
P Paste before.
x delete character under cursor
X delete previous character
D Delete to end of line.
Cursor movement
0 $ start/end of line
^ Goto first non-blank character of line.
CTRL-d Move down half a page.
CTRL-u Move up half a page.
t s Move to the next 1 or 2 character match on the current line.
, ; Move to the previous/next match.
/ ? Search forward/backward
n N reapeat search in same/opposite direction
Replace
:%s/old/new/g replace all old with new
Misc
If you’re thinking about rebinding the movement keys, hjkl, for home-row use with a different keyboard layout, don’t do it. You’ll be faster in the long run by minimizing your use of navigating by row/column.
SPC RET Create or jump to bookmark.
Use SPC : as the equivalent of M-x.
gs gives you many search options. gs SPC and start typing a word to see choosable highlights.
Buffers
SPC b d to kill the current buffer SPC b [pn] next/prev buffer
Multi-editing
Might not be enabled by default. Uncomment the multiple-cursors line in ~/.doom.d/packages.el
You have several options.
evil-multiedit
Visually select some text and then press R to select all the rest in the current buffer. (This is a good chance to use narrowing.)
Repeatedly press M-d with the cursor over a word.
gzz to create cursor at point.
gzt will temporarily pause the cursors. Move commands will cause all cursors to move in sync with the primary cursor if you don’t pause it.
evil-mc
gzm to create cursors at all matches for the word at point.
gzd to create a cursor at point and move to the next match (and gzD to create and move to the previous match).
Viewing help/documentation
Pressing K with the cursor over a word will open a mini-buffer asking where you would like to search for that term. If the word is an Emacs command, it will open a buffer to the docs.
Commenting
gcc to comment or uncomment a line or selection.
Development
Git
SPC g g to launch Magit
File Navigation
SPC SPC to fuzzy find file in current project
SPC , to fuzzy find buffer in current project
SPC f r to switch to a recently viewed file