> How on earth do you use Emacs without an ESC key?

Hmm, I think I've never used my ESC key when using Emacs, I bind Ctrl to Caps-Lock and call it a day.

BTW, I also frequently (~3-4 times a day) use vim, and I never found it hard to edit with the Touch Bar Esc key. I can find the Esc location without looking, I'm pretty sure anyone can do that. It's just simple: just press the most left part. The non-display part left on the esc button display also works as the esc key, so no problem with that.

(Yes, and that's why I believe that people who hate the Touch Bar b.c. of the no Esc key have never used the MBP. It's really a non-issue.)

Well, speaking as a daily vim user, you must be much more talented than I am at using a keyboard. I could never get the hang of touch-typing the virtual ESC (especially since in certain workflows I want to be able to rest my finger on the key without pressing it).

It was the thing that finally got me to rebind my mode switch to `jj`. Which works great, until the keyboard decides that "j" is the key it's going to double that day, then it's very frustrating... Fortunately today the keys it has decided to double are "bb" and "88"

Ive been using one since the touchbar 15” came out and I loathe it.

There’s no physical feedback for the escape touchbar area even after you learn to strike it without looking. It sucks.

> There’s no physical feedback for the escape touchbar area even after you learn to strike it without looking.

Ah, I also agree that it's a problem. For now, I use the HapticKey[0] app to mitigate the problem. It's wonderful.

[0] https://github.com/niw/HapticKey

I used the MBP with touchbar for work. I could not live without the physical escape key, returned the laptop and settled for a Windows laptop.

"It's really a non-issue."

For you. It's a non-issue, for you. That doesn't make other people's experience invalid.

Evil escape and binding esc to fd or jk is a game changer

What do you use escape for in emacs? It’s not in any default kebinding, do you mean vi? Even that doesn’t need escape, ctrl + ] keeps you on the home row.

Slightly confused emacs user.

C-x ESC ESC (translated from C-x <escape> <escape>) runs the command repeat-complex-command

Old timers (like me) use it for meta. Ask anyone over 50!

As the meta key, i.e., hitting ESC then x for M-x.

On a Mac I use "option" for this; much shorter reach

It's funny but I've been using Emacs for almost 25 years and still use ESC instead of ALT/OPTION, guess that's muscle memory from using Emacs via telnet sessions.

Alt+Key doesn't save any keystrokes over Esc+Key anyway, and I think the Esc version is easier to type.

Especially things like Esc : (which is Esc then Shift-;) is surely easier to type than Alt-Shift-;.

That's my experience, too, I guess it's from learning EMACS and its ancestors on actual VT-100 style terminals with no meta keys.

Indeed, never even crossed my mind to set the escape key to meta, definitely not a default even for Cocoa emacs.

I rebind caps lock to escape - it’s a much better use of an otherwise nearly pointless key

I use caps lock the moment I need to type 2 consecutive upper case characters.

Reading through the comments here, it’s amusing to see how many people make assumptions about how things should be just because that’s how they work.

Someone above claimed that not being able to blind type function keys shows severe keyboard incompetence, something all trained computer typists should be able to do.

Well what about us poor souls who are trained mechanical typewriter typists? We didn’t have function keys?

The age discrimination is real!

I rebind it to backspace, as in the Colemak layout.

This works pretty great, especially since eg. ctrl + backspace (I don't know about Macs, does cmd + backspace work?) deletes the entire last word.

Without remapping the capslock you need both hands to execute this shortcut, which makes it much less practical.

It's only pointless if you have a single layout.

It's very useful to switch input layouts.

Then it's not capslock. By using it to switch input layouts, you admitted it's useless.

You can still hit ESC on a touchbar Mac. You tap the end of the touchbar where the ESC key should be. It's annoying and unnecessary, but it's not like they just pried the key out with a screwdriver.

Ctrl-[ - I hated no escape key, but my fingers no longer look for that physical key, even on keyboards that have it. Ctrl-[ is always there, and it is less of a stretch. I've gotten un-used to pressing a real esc key (I hate the touch-bar esc).

Mapped to capslock?