That’s what I figured. Ya I grew up with the F keys being used for debugging, and that’s a big reason I actually just never have media keys enabled lol.
Yeah me too. They problem is we get locked into modalities that were common when we started using computers.
People use vim say, because the computer when they were 15 didn't run emacs well and now they're 45 and because of this fairly unrelated fact from 1992 they're still doing the same thing.
I try hard to question these assumptions and move on. I use USB foot pedals as quasi-mode keys and sliders and knobs of MIDI controllers to do things like go through browser tabs, window stacks, file hierarchies, scroll through files...
Just my style.
I've thought about trying voice dictation or using the 6DOF sensors on an old phone maybe for a ZUI interface (say figma) but I haven't explored it yet.
Pulling this off in X requires a lot of esoterica of virtual keyboards and named pipes but it's totally doable. We need to find better ways to interface computers and I'm convinced that will not come by attaching a smartphone to our face (or by groups like MIT media lab either. I've worked with them and I wish it were otherwise).
Also I've been learning emacs, it's actually pretty neat.
Just look at the keys they're right there, conveniently ergonomically placed
I've been doing it for years. It works great