HN.zip

ShannonMax: A Library to Optimize Emacs Keybindings with Information Theory

62 points by sammy0910 - 14 comments
Jeff_Brown [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Something I love about emacs is the ability to tab complete the name of a command. I do know a lot of keyboard shortcuts, but I use way, way more commands than I know the shortcut for. Need to rename a buffer? M-x ren-buf TAB should do it. Etc.
setopt [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Me to, but to be fair, I think this is no longer unique to Emacs. See for example the "command palette" in VSCode; it isn’t "tab completion" per se but similar to e.g. M-x with Vertico.
BeetleB [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Probably he's referring to "fuzzy find"?

Yes, VSCode has something similar, I believe. But Emacs had it before VSCode existed ;-)

goodmythical [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I was thinking I was crazy...I use command completion in lots of different applications...
snikeris [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This is cool.

While we're discussing optimizing emacs keybindings...I've found it key to have my bindings set up such that my thumbs operate the control modifier key.

kleiba [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I'm fine with the standard CAPS_LOCK is CTRL setup...
Pay08 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I could never get used to that. I should probably try forcing the issue to see if I can rewire my muscle memory, but I'm afraid that it'll be a problem in places where I don't want caps lock rebound to ctrl.
lorenzohess [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This looks great. Would there be an easy way to generalize this program to tiling window managers? Maybe initially I can use this by modifying the WM to forward all its keybindings to a dummy Emacs instance. For WMs is the entropy theory also applicable?
oritron [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Some people use Emacs /as a tiling window manager/ :) https://github.com/emacs-exwm/exwm
sammy0910 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
it should be -- as long as you have like the right logging set up, I think the theory would also be applicable.

currently the calculations in this library are done with a clojure jar, so if you're interested, you might have an easier time calling that directly

tra3 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Are there any similar tools for the OS as a whole?

I'm trying to switch to Corne keyboards and the key maps are critical.

Pay08 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This is theoretically pretty extensible, but you need an OS-wide keylogger. On the Linux side, I'm not sure if Wayland allows for that at all.
chills [3 hidden]5 mins ago
What do you mean, "the OS as a whole"? This is the OS!
aghilmort [3 hidden]5 mins ago
this is great / will try!