4 ms·

One day they will come up with an advanced keyboard layout that keep hjkl movement keys, and I'll give it a try. I wonder how much of a day of typing can be ge

One day they will come up with an advanced keyboard layout that keep hjkl movement keys, and I'll give it a try. I wonder how much of a day of typing can be generalized to a keymap that is good for words and prose input, even code input, and how much is meta things like navigation, and editor commands or window manager commands, etc... I also wonder how much varies from person to person. I feel like I do a fairly small amount of prose or code input but a lot of window navigation, scrolling, thinking... Honestly, though, keeping qwerty and switching to a ErgoDox has made me extremely happy and uninterested in trying another keyboard layout. I have the qwerty layout mostly as it is on all my other devices (Chromebook, laptop, workstation), but I have a bunch of little tweaks for my work environment including customization for work like modifiers for tiling window manager and different layers for coding characters and special functions (mouse paste and browser back). I have a friend that had it set up so that in insert mode in vi it was Dvorak and in command mode it was qwerty so hjkl worked. Based on people I've seen switching between Dvorak and qwerty, that seems awfully painful.

jasone 8y ago
I use Dvorak (5 years total, vs 25 with qwerty), and IMO Dvorak is clearly superior for the specific case of vi motion (hjkl). Dvorak places these keys on 4 separate fingers rather than 3, and their relative positions make just as much sense as with qwerty. I've used vim since 2005, but before that I used emacs for 11 years, 3 of which was on Dvorak keyboards. I similarly found qwerty vs Dvorak to be a wash in the context of the editor. The only combination that has given me trouble with Dvorak is OS X hotkeys and mouse (can't reach some hotkeys while right hand is on the mouse). OS X and trackpad works fine with Dvorak. These days I use Dvorak layout even on my Android phone, and my family's computers are configured to easily switch between layouts, so I only rarely find the need to suffer qwerty. This is a strong contrast to 2001, when I last switched back to qwerty.
- snthpy 8y ago
  I agree. After 15 years on QWERTY and now over 10 years on Dvorak, I find the navigation in vim with the default hjkl keys in Dvorak better than in QWERTY. I'm considering switching to Colemak but the vim key mappings concern me.
  - ealhad 8y ago
    If your fear lies in hjkl, you can try Colemak. - h and l are really close, and if you move your fingers a bit you can have index on h and middle on l. - j and k are on the same column, with j on top and k on bottom. That reminds me of “natural scrolling”.
ealhad 8y ago
> One day they will come up with an advanced keyboard layout that keep hjkl movement keys, and I'll give it a try. Everytime I read this kind of argument, I tell myself “Surely, I must be using Vim in a weird way”. I really don't use hjkl that much, compared to test objects or search (or on my setup, sneak[0]). [0] https://github.com/justinmk/vim-sneak https://github.com/justinmk/vim-sneak

jasone 8y ago

I use Dvorak (5 years total, vs 25 with qwerty), and IMO Dvorak is clearly superior for the specific case of vi motion (hjkl). Dvorak places these keys on 4 separate fingers rather than 3, and their relative positions make just as much sense as with qwerty. I've used vim since 2005, but before that I used emacs for 11 years, 3 of which was on Dvorak keyboards. I similarly found qwerty vs Dvorak to be a wash in the context of the editor. The only combination that has given me trouble with Dvorak is OS X hotkeys and mouse (can't reach some hotkeys while right hand is on the mouse). OS X and trackpad works fine with Dvorak. These days I use Dvorak layout even on my Android phone, and my family's computers are configured to easily switch between layouts, so I only rarely find the need to suffer qwerty. This is a strong contrast to 2001, when I last switched back to qwerty.

snthpy 8y ago
I agree. After 15 years on QWERTY and now over 10 years on Dvorak, I find the navigation in vim with the default hjkl keys in Dvorak better than in QWERTY. I'm considering switching to Colemak but the vim key mappings concern me.
- ealhad 8y ago
  If your fear lies in hjkl, you can try Colemak. - h and l are really close, and if you move your fingers a bit you can have index on h and middle on l. - j and k are on the same column, with j on top and k on bottom. That reminds me of “natural scrolling”.

ealhad 8y ago

> One day they will come up with an advanced keyboard layout that keep hjkl movement keys, and I'll give it a try. Everytime I read this kind of argument, I tell myself “Surely, I must be using Vim in a weird way”. I really don't use hjkl that much, compared to test objects or search (or on my setup, sneak[0]). [0] https://github.com/justinmk/vim-sneak https://github.com/justinmk/vim-sneak