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It is extremely frustrating to see a post downvoted just because it is a diverging opinion, especially when it contains some of the best advice in this thread.
by ykonstant 3y ago
It is extremely frustrating to see a post downvoted just because it is a diverging opinion, especially when it contains some of the best advice in this thread.
Indeed, for random access on screen, there is no better alternative than the mouse or trackpoint (the latter defeating the non-argument about moving your hand, since it is literally in the middle of the home row), that is what it was designed for. And if for whatever reason you don't want to use a trackpoint, install EasyMotion and map the random access motion to spacebar or another big key as I have done. It is the second best way to achieve random access on screen.
For more structured motion/editing tasks, I am perfectly happy with Vim's advanced motions on text-objects. But random access is still a very common task, and trackpoint or EasyMotion is just both faster and more "ergonomic".
- jodrellblank 3y ago> "Indeed, for random access on screen, there is no better alternative than the mouse or trackpoint" There should be. Touchscreen. Eye tracking. With a mouse I have to go via a silly walk[1] moving my arm and scraping a chunk of plastic over a desk as a proxy for scraping a mouse pointer over the screen. With a keyboard I have to invent a magical incantation of button presses to poke the state machine and make the cursor do a silly walk over the lines/rows/words/brackets/search term/etc. from where it is to where I want it to be. Why can't I look and "go there" directly without either silly walk? [1] https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-53TOKiAMoow/VD0EeGQ24oI/AAAAAAAAW3A/CFCQb3XD4OE/s1600/Ministry%2Bof%2BSilly%2BWalks.gif https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-53TOKiAMoow/VD0EeGQ24oI/AAAAAAAAW...
- ykonstant 3y agoGood point, touchscreen is even faster. Eye tracking may be hard to make work properly (false positives, false negatives, invalid actions...), but would indeed be the fastest.