Benoit J - My mostly tech blog

Native Emacs Bindings

Published on 2024-08-04

Categories: tech
Tags: Emacs configuration

My Emacs binding style is changing back to native Emacs bindings.

Context

My journey with Emacs starting around 1996, while working on a cross platform portfolio management application, especially working on cross platform Windows / Linux GUI based on WxWidgets.

Emacs was great for C++ projects, even at the time. My configuration was minimal and I was using native bindings.

Then around 2000, I started coding in Java, and also discovered vim. Modal editing really clicked for me, and Vim became my editor for couple of years. I was still using Emacs on and off when I was coding in C or C++.

My journey with Emacs took a turn in 2016, while changing job, I rediscovered Emacs, this time with Spacemacs, and then with DoomEmacs. Both of these configuration makes extensive use of Evil, a better vim layout for Emacs :).

I continued using Evil, even with my “from scratch” configuration.

Except for couple of months sometimes in 2022, I’ve been using vim bindings even in Emacs.

The plan

Now is time to try something new, try to use Emacs native bindings and solve problems / inefficiencies that can be with the Emacs bindings.

Some of the discovery:

  1. my use of <space> prefix can easily be replaced by C-c prefix. This became my “global” prefix for a while, and <space> when in normal mode.
  2. I can use the C-c prefix for many of the annoying bindings for useful commands.
  3. Avy, Embark, Ace Window can be used in combination to help me move around and improve navigation.

So I’ve been working:

  1. first to replace general and all my global bindings, including use-package :general configuration with C-c prefix and the use-package :bind clause.
  2. turn off evil and any evil related packages.

So since a week, I’m back on native bindings.

How it’s going so far?

I’m not too lost, but I need to develop navigation reflexes with avy and isearch.

Oh, and I need to go back to isearch, consult-line is not a valid replacement for isearch without the vim / search key available in evil.

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