Some relevant posts:
http://blog.zvikico.com/2010/11/my-keyboard-maestro-macro-collection.html
http://blog.zvikico.com/2010/10/goodbye-quicksilver-hello-launchbar.html

I’m intrigued by your “embrace the chaos” notion with Yojimbo. Is there a non-page program like Yojimbo for PCs?

But Cmd+ what character to move between windows

Thank you.

It’s in System Preferences, in the Keyboard tab, under “Keyboard Shortcuts”. Under “Keyboard & Text Input”, there is an item called “Move focus to the menu bar”. There is a default keystroke assigned, or you can assign your own.

Having moved focus to the menu bar, you can use the arrow keys to move around. If you’re on a menu, you can use the space key to expand the menu. You can type the first letter of the command you want within the current menu, but if there are multiple commands that start with that letter you’ll have to use arrow keys.

I’m not sure how useful this technique really is but I might give it a try. It’s not quite the equivalent of Windows menus. I think it’s more intended for people who are either really averse to a mouse or mouse-like pointer device, or who have some sort of impairment that makes a mouse really difficult.

Scott, you’ve mentioned the distinction between Delete and Backspace. There’s an Emacs keystroke for forward-Delete: ^D, which is much easier to hit (using the remapped Caps key, which is nice and big and convenient to the pinky) than fn-Delete.

The Home and End key behavior on Macs can be annoying. Using emacs keystrokes: ^A goes to beginning of line (the mnemonic is “A is the first letter of the alphabet”), and ^E goes to end of line (“E as in ‘End’”). Again, I think this is even better than Home and End because you don’t have to reach over to the special keys area. Your left hand is usually positioned well already to hit these keys.

Here’s a nifty shortcut: ^T transposes the characters on either side of the caret, which is handy for fixing typos like “teh” instead of “the”.

Other keys I use:

^F — forward one character
^B — back one character
^P — up to previous line
^N — down to next line
^K — delete (kill) to end of line

There are probably more but these get me a long, long way.

Not all apps support Emacs keys, a notable exception being the MS apps, but the vast majority do.

Arrow keys do come in handy for some things. Command-UpArrow goes to the top of the document, and Command-DownArrow to the bottom. Alternatively, you could use Command-A to select all, then use the Emacs ^A or ^F keys, if you prefer to keep your hands over the main keyboard area.

Also, when I start having window overload, I sometimes like to use Command-Option-H, which in most apps hides all other apps. The one app this doesn’t help with much is Safari, where I typically have dozens of windows open, so hitting Command-Option-H doesn’t change the appearance of the screen much.

There’s a utility — a couple of them, actually, that make your current app’s front window stand out by slightly graying out everything else. They work by putting a screen-sized translucent gray window behind your current window. Another alternative for managing window overload. I don’t remember any names; perhaps someone can remind me?

sb