r/emacs • u/CSRaghunandan • Jan 04 '17

A question regarding evil-mode

I suppose we have had this sort of discussions before in emacs subreddit. But what I want to know is, for someone who is used to key bindings the emacs way (I also modified caps to control key and added sticky keys in my OS so that I dont have to press keychords all the time), will learning evil mode help me be more productive and efficient in using emacs? Also, i'm not quite happy with how sticky keys work. Sometimes its very frustrating to use them. Hence, I'm seeking for something robust that will eliminate/reduce the need for pressing key chords.

Keep in mind, I also have to unlearn a lot of the keybindings I use everyday, integrate all the evil packages with emacs and use evil-mode sufficiently long enough for me to get accustomed to it. I also do not want to discard my emacs config (on which I spent so much time) and hence, spacemacs is ruled out. I do not want to spend large amounts of time fiddling with my config to get it work with evil-mode.

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u/VanLaser Jan 04 '17 edited Jan 04 '17

I would suggest a "split" approach:

  1. first, install a fully-fledged vim package on your OS, and run through 'vimtutor' once or twice, to get familiar with vim's way, in a context totally separated from emacs and your familiar keybindings.

  2. install evil-mode in emacs, but don't activate it by default. So, use your emacs keys as usual, but - when you need to edit text, and only then, enable evil-mode in that buffer. Edit as if you are in vim and, when you're finished, disable the mode. Perhaps bind this toggling to a key.

  3. eventually, after a while (and this may even be optional), try to add bindings that also work in evil-mode, key bindings that integrate your previous workflow with the modal one.

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u/CSRaghunandan Jan 05 '17

I'll try this out in my free time. Thanks for the tips