I’ve been less good at taking adequate typing breaks during the lockdown and I’ve become concerned about how much chording my left hand does on its own during typical Emacs usage, with caps lock rebound to control, as I’ve had it for years.

I thought that now was as good a time as any to do something drastic about this. Here are my rebindings:

• the keys on either side of the spacebar are control
• the keys just outside of those are alt/meta
• caps lock is Super, Windows or Command depending on OS
• if the preceding change means some of your window manager key bindings become one-handed chords (e.g. Super+q), rebind them so that they become two-handed again (e.g. Super+p).

Optional extras:

• left control is caps lock
• right control is the compose key.

This has the following advantages:

• you can easily achieve this rebinding on GNU/Linux, Windows and macOS
• almost every keyboard has enough keys near the spacebar to make it work, and it’s fine to have just one super key since it is not involved in any one handed chords
• does not involve relying on the difference between tapping and releasing and holding a modifier key, which I find fragile
• there are control and alt/meta keys available to both hands, so there is much less call for one-handed chording
• control and alt/meta are pressed by the thumb, the strongest finger, so when one-handed chording does come up (e.g. typing C-x C-o without switching from the right to the left control keys in the middle of the sequence), it’s the least harmful form
  • my plan is to use the control/meta key available to the opposite hand for the first key of each sequence, and allow some one handed chording to complete the sequence. E.g. for C-x C-o do RCtrl+x as normal, but before releasing RCtrl with the right hand, also use that hand to type o.
    • Update 23/vii/2020: I’ve found that I’m typing some of these sequences by performing a one-handed chord in order to type the second key, as just described, and others by performing a one-handed chord in order to type the first key (e.g. for the case of C-x C-o, doing LCtrl+x all with the left hand then typing x with the right hand before releasing LCtrl). There are actually only a handful of these sequences, so it seems okay to have sequence-specific habits.
  • there is some temptation to use a curled up little finger on the new alt/meta key, I’m finding, but I’m trying to stop myself from doing that.

The main disadvantage, aside from an adjustment period when I feel that someone has inserted a massive marshmellow between me and my computer, is that Ctrl-Alt combinations are a bit difficult; in Emacs, C-M-SPC is hard to do without. However I think I’ve found a decent way to do it (thumb on control, curled ring finger on alt, possibly little finger on shift for Emacs’ infamous C-M-S-v standard binding). (Update 23/vii/2020: This has been working out fine.)

Update 7/xii/2024: Sometimes I hit left control accidentally, toggling caps lock when it’s not wanted. Supposing that I do want to have a caps lock key at all, I’ve considered a few times whether there is somewhere else to put it that’s less liable to be toggled accidentally.

I’ve concluded that there isn’t a good alternative location. I don’t want my layout to depend on having more than two rebindable keys to the right of the spacebar, having encountered a sufficient number of keyboards which I want to use with only two usable keys there. Nor do I want to depend on the presence of PrtSc/SysRq, Scroll Lock or Pause/Break. That leaves us with a rebindable third key to the left of the spacebar, and the physical caps lock key, to accommodate both Super/Win/Command and caps lock. The physical caps lock key is the easier to press of the two; rarely nowadays, but sometimes, a keyboard has just two keys to the left of the spacebar; and I use Super/Win/Command more than I use caps lock. Therefore, the rebindings described above are optimal.

Hitting Escape accidentally is worse than hitting either Super/Win/Command or caps lock accidentally, so it stays where it is, at the top left.