Oh what a nuisance, having to configure key-bindings so that Emacs becomes usable on Mac-OS...
The Problem
- You need a proper META-key to use Emacs.
- With non-US keyboards, you need the ALT-key to type characters like [, ], { or }.
Command-as-Meta? No way...
People discuss wether to configure the COMMAND-key (aka "apple-key" or CMD) as META.
Imho impossible, as in *all* other Mac applications, CMD plays a central role (new, open, duplicate, quit, minimize etc.). No way I can unlearn these key combinations.
Escape-as-Meta? Your Fingers Run Marathon...
Some people use ESC as Meta. For every of the numerous Meta-commands in Emacs, send your little pinky finger all the way up north-east to Escape-country… no, that feels like an unhealthy amount of movement to me.
Left-ALT-as-Meta, Right-Alt-for-Special-Characters
Whow - that's clever: Using the left-Alt key for something different than the right-Alt key...
Simple put the following line in your emacs configuration file (~/emacs.d/user.el or similar):
(setq ns-right-alternate-modifier nil)
That works fine for me...
Of course, I have CAPS-Lock mapped to CTRL (in Mac-OS system settings under keyboard)
Some more Emacs Links
@pschirmacher pointed me to http://www.braveclojure.com/basic-emacs/, which contains both a nice setup and pragmatic introduction.
I use the "vanilla Emacs" - of course the key config from above also works in terminal-Emacs.
