Kinesis Savant Elite2 Foot Pedal

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Kinesis Savant Elite2 Triple Foot Pedal

I got asked about foot pedal a lot.

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Kinesis Savant Elite2 Triple Foot Pedal Buy at amazon 2016×1512

What does it do?

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Pedal Does Not Work as Control or Alt or Any Modifier Key

First, know that you cannot use the pedal as a modifier key, such as Shift Ctrl Alt ❖ Window ⌘ command keys.

This is actually good, because holding down a key, or keep pressing the pedal, is tiring. More importantly, you don't get confused with gas pedal when driving a car. There is a story of a teen gamer who used a pedal for “push to talk”. One day, he's in his car with mom, and he pushed to talk.

Use as Single Key System-Wide Functions

I recommend to use foot pedal as single key function.

I list them roughly from most frequently used command first.

Note: the shortcut keys may be different depending on your operating system.

Use in Emacs or Vim

In emacs, good use are:

Use with Vim, Spacemacs, Evil Mode, xah-fly-keys

For these, a very good use is to set a pedal to switch to command mode, or switch to insert mode.

[see Emacs: Xah Fly Keys]

Use as Leader Key in Key Sequence

I also recommend using it as a leader key in a key sequence. for example, in Emacs: Xah Fly Keys or evil-mode or spacemacs leader key.

Howard Abrams's Review

Howard Abrams is a well know emacs user and elisp coder.

[Reviewing Kinesis Foot Pedal and Emacs By Howard Abrams. At http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/kinesis-footpedal.html , accessed on 2016-05-05 ]

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Music Organ Pedals

organ pedal board
organ pedal board. [[image source 2016-05-06 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pedalboard-30.jpg ]]

Have you seen music organ pedal board?

Yes, people can do that. Not hard really, you just need practice, just like typing or even writing with pen. It's a learned skill.