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My usual comment on any thread touching vim, as an answer to all hypothetical comments talking about how vim never clicked : Remap the Escape key to CapsLock e
by cassepipe 3y ago
My usual comment on any thread touching vim, as an answer to all hypothetical comments talking about how vim never clicked :
Remap the Escape key to CapsLock else you will never like vim (provided you are a normal person)
It's the most important key and you should punctuate all your inserts with it. So it'd better not be the key that's the furthest away from your fingers.
The reason that's the case is an historical accident.
Don't be a victim. Remap.
P.S : Yes, I know about people using Ctrl+[, or Ctrl+C, I know you got used to it but one gets used to anything, it does not mean it's good. A weird combination isn't great and Ctrl + C has some quirks --> https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/25764/use-control-c-instead-of-escape-key https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/25764/use-control-c-i...
P.P.S : Yes, I know about `jk` it's clever ok but my mapping is system-wide and now I enjoy Escape being at the right spot for bash, zsh, fish, gdb, firenvim vim modes at no configuration cost.
- wruza 3y ago“Doesn’t mean it’s good” doesn’t mean it’s a problem either. Also, people prone to remapping already have their Ctrl there.
- cassepipe 3y agoLife can be beautiful we don't have to suffer because it's already there. Remapping takes less than 5 seconds in MacOs and Linux. 2 minutes in Windows. And you only have to set it up once. Also my left pinkie never misses CapsLock and I don't even have to think about it. Can't say that's the case for Ctrl+[ which I have used extensively for one year. I am really happy I switched.
- carb 3y agoWhat do you do when you need Ctrl in non-vim contexts?
- cassepipe 3y agoI just press Ctrl ? But frankly I don't use Ctrl that much. Ctrl + L/K in Firefox (I use vimium but I prefer the native bar) And I have Ctrl + J/K to switch terminal tabs In vim I only rarely use Ctrl + I/O
- carb 3y agoAre you often working within the command line? I don't use vim bindings elsewhere so I use these a lot: "Edit a command line" section on https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/terminal/trmlshtcts/mac https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/terminal/trmlshtcts/ma...
- carb 3y agoYeah I use Ctrl far more often than Esc as I'm usually navigating code and reading it vs writing it, so Caps Lock -> Ctrl is more valuable. Additionally, I use Ctrl outside of vim very frequently as I keep my terminal key bindings native, which means all of the command line control patterns use Ctrl (jump to front, jump to back, cut (forwards/backwards), move by word, reverse search, etc etc) I'm still of the opinion that Ctrl+[ like the OP said would be mentioned is the best because (1) it's native and (2) it uses both hands so it's almost as fast as hitting a single key and requires no hand contortion. - 14 year exclusive vim user
- camtarn 3y ago> Remap the Escape key to CapsLock else you will never like vim (provided you are a normal person) I guess I'm not a normal person then? Never bothered doing the remapping and I've been an enthusiastic Vim user for a decade.
- MSFT_Edging 3y agoSmacking the escape key constantly is probably my favorite part of using Vim. It has me smacking escape all the time to see what it does in other apps. I love when esc is just mapped to a "stop doing that" or "go back". Also doing embedded stuff, I find the caps lock key nice for when typing out a few defines or macros.
- dinkleberg 3y agoHaha I’d hate to know the number of form modals I’ve closed out of after instinctively hitting escape.
- cassepipe 3y agoI don't know you but that is likely. Most people are not believers and when they find something inconvenient they abandon it. Most people do what most people are doing :-) That's not the case for me. I am a believer, I use Firefox, Signal and vim, not Chrome, WhatsApp or VsCode. And I like it that way. The problem with being a believer is that you tend to downplay issues and that can bite you sometimes. I know because I have been been bothered by Escape being too far away for one whole year and use the weird combo instead. Surely there was a good reason for things being that way but I finally asked it turned out there was not. Maybe you are the rare person that has very long fingers or whatnot and it's not inconvenient for you but you most likely are a believer :)
- camtarn 3y agoHaha, yes, this is very true. I was the guy who gave a lunchtime lightning presentation on why to use Vim (TL;DR: automating repetitive actions using the . key, macros, :global, :normal etc etc) :) I use jk to get out of Insert mode on my local machine, and ctrl-C on remote machines where I don't have my .vimrc.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- joenot443 3y ago> Remap the Escape key to CapsLock else you will never like vim (provided you are a normal person) I think this is great advice for EVERYONE, vim user or not. Someone else made this suggestion on HN some 8 years ago and I haven't looked back since. CapsLock is essentially useless for modern computing needs, but having a No/Cancel/Quit/Esc button immediately under your left pinky is fantastic. Your brain will get used to it in a day or so, give it a try!
- zeroxfe 3y agoYes, CapsLock is useless, and I've been remapping it to Ctrl since forever, which serves me a lot more than Esc.
- sodapopcan 3y agoBest use for capslock in my book is tap for escape, hold for ctrl.
- sodapopcan 3y ago> Ctrl+C ...and to try and avoid this being perpetuated as it always seems to: ctrl-c is NOT the identical to escape. Notably is doesn't trigger InsertLeave which means a handful of plugins won't trigger. I think your advice can be summed up to: Remap esc to something more convenient. My capslock key is tap for escape and hold for ctrl. I use jk for escaping insert mode because why would I want to be a "victim" who has to stretch their pinky even one key when my fingers are always going to rest on JK? ;)
- e12e 3y agoBut caps lock is remapped to control already! :)
- bori5 3y agoWHAT? HOW AM I GONNA TYPE MY SENTENCES THEN!?
- arbitrandomuser 3y ago> WHAT? HOW AM I GONNA TYPE MY SENTENCES THEN!? goto visual mode , select region to capitalize , shift - U
- crunchbang-excl 3y agoThe caps lock key is definitely using prime real estate on a keyboard for something that doesn't get used often. I have taken to remapping it to a function key, moving caps lock to function+shift. Function+tab is mapped to escape, a combination I can easily press with my pinky alone. This allows me to map a lot of the keys that would require moving my hand to function+[alphanumeric key], function+i is insert, function+u is page up, function+j is page down, function+r is home, function+f is end, and other such combinations. I use a keyboard that supports QMK, so all of this customization is on the keyboard, but this could probably be done with software running on the computer, like AutoHotKey on Windows.
- JBorrow 3y agoOn a Mac you can do this rebinding entirely natively within the system keyboard settings.
- dm319 3y agoCan I suggest going one further and have esc mapped to tap, ctrl to hold. You can also map double escape to :noh in vim, which allows you to quickly remove highlighting.
- trws 3y agoFWIW, my “jk” mapping is also global, as is my C-[ mapping. Karabiner FTW. In all seriousness I haven’t found a way to manage a “jk” mapping that so correctly and quickly handles all cases of input in anything else, on any platform. (Except of course built into the keyboard) Autohotkey can kinda sorta do it, but it takes a lot more code for an inferior result sadly.