Ergoemacs is a set of customizations that make emacs easier to use. It also includes ergoemacs-mode. The minor mode, ergoemacs-mode, implements the keybindings (and some other features) via a minor-mode that can be toggled to get back to standard emacs.

You can hold the left Alt, then right hand press space to mark, then right hand using any of QWERTY i j k l to move by char, line, or u o to move by word. ⇧ Shift+U and ⇧ Shift+O to move by paragraph/block.

Of course, you can also use the standard shortcuts. For example, to select all, you can press Ctrl+a. To move up, you can press ⇧ Shift+↓ to select text downward.

Another option is to use the ergoemacs reduction key theme. Then the shift-movement keys work.

Ergoemacs-mode allows key sequences to be changed with a backspace key. This masks some of the delete key sequences like C-x Backspace which runs backward-kill-sentence. You can turn this off by the following

(define-key ergoemacs-normal-translation-local-map (kbd "DEL") nil)

If you wish to remove it from the other specialized translations you can do that as well:

(define-key ergoemacs-ctl-to-alt-translation-local-map (kbd "DEL") nil)
(define-key ergoemacs-unchordedl-translation-local-map (kbd "DEL") nil)

You can also allow ergoemacs-mode to translate the Delete key to backspace, so Ctl+x backspace can be typed as Ctrl+x Delete key

Some of ergoemacs keys make use of the 【▤ Menu】 key. One way to set this up in a mac is to replace the Caps Lock key with F13 or above, and tell emacs that F13 is actually the menu key. This is done by:

1. Downloading and installing Karabiner
2. Going to the Simple Modifications tab in Karabiner
3. Adding a mapping from caps lock to F13
4. Adding the translation to emacs startup script (like ~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.d/init.el) as follows:

(define-key key-translation-map (kbd "<f13>") (kbd "<menu>"))

The emacs key notation is common across emacs, but not common for new users. One of the goals of ergoemacs-mode is to allow new emacs users to not have to learn anything about the keys to start using emacs. Therefore, all keys are defined in Ctrl+s notation instead of C-s notation.

You have some options to get to copy and paste:

• You can Alt + the normal key positions for undo cut copy paste
• If you want, you can easily do it with:

(global-set-key (kbd "<C-j>") 'ergoemacs-cut-line-or-region)

• If you want you can keep all standard shortcuts in the normal QWERTY positions by:

(setq ergoemacs-theme nil)
(setq ergoemacs-change-fixed-layout-to-variable-layout t)
(setq ergoemacs-keyboard-layout "dv")
(require 'ergoemacs-mode)
(ergoemacs-mode 1)

Ergoemacs-mode uses the Option/Alt key as the Meta key by default. To use Command as the Alt key and Option as the Super key, set

(setq ns-command-modifier 'meta)
(setq ns-alternate-modifier 'super)

See also here for more information about setting modifiers. Note that this can interfere with some global shortcuts. For example, Ergoemacs-mode uses Meta-SPC to set the mark. However, typing Command-SPC ordinarily brings up Spotlight. To disable this and allow Ergoemacs to use this binding, go into

System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Spotlight

and disable that binding.