>   - ctrl-y deletes the current line immediately (handier than
>     ctrl-k). Also other miscellaneous key settings.

Hm, I'd say doing this is evil since C-y is used by lot of other
software as 'insert'. Rather rebind C-k so you later have the option
of trying the Emacsian way of doing things.

When I first came to Emacs, I was trying to do the same as you've done
- making Emacs adopt the way of editing I was used to from my
DOS/Windows background. However, my brother who had been using Emacs
for half a decade or so (he's nine years older than me), encouraged me
to try using C-f, C-b, C-n, C-p and so on for moving around.

So I tried it a day or two, found it difficult to get used to, dropped
it a few days but then finally got back to it. And within a week I was
quite fluent and had found that it actually boosted my typing
performance a lot, eventually say 50%. It is really a relief not
having to lift and move the right hand every time you need to move the
cursor, especially when programming where there are typically lots of
small adjustments.

The idea of leaving the mark behind with C-SPC, moving the cursor to
the other end of a piece of text to be copied and pressing M-w also
makes sense once you get used to it, though it probably requires that
one is using C-f, C-b etc. to be effective.

Since most people are using these keys, a lot of other programs in
Linux/Unix also support such bindings (or perhaps VI ones).

Anyway, if anyone is interested in learning them, there is a nice
tutorial in Emacs in the help menu. It takes time to learn, but
eventually it pays off... :-)


Just wanted to throw in another aspect,

-- 
Ole Laursen 
http://sunsite.dk/olau/

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