5 ms·
I've switched to programmable ergo keyboards where there's a whole slew of options (https://precondition.github.io/home-row-mods https://precondition.github.io/
by __s 4mo ago
I've switched to programmable ergo keyboards where there's a whole slew of options (https://precondition.github.io/home-row-mods https://precondition.github.io/home-row-mods just covers home row mods)
I've always hated stateful control. Always ripped out caps lock key from my boards (or later figured out remapping), same for insert mode
That's carried over, even with options like one shot mods, & cutting down to under 40 keys (& playing with 28, yesterday received a https://github.com/kilipan/zilpzalp https://github.com/kilipan/zilpzalp), I still don't find stateful control necessary. More layers, combos, & tap-hold go far
- xedrac 4mo agoYou sound like you would prefer Emacs over Vim.
- packetlost 4mo agoI mostly agree with GP on stateful controls, but emacs has never clicked for me like vim did. Perhaps it's because switching between modes feels more natural than a simple toggle.
- allarm 4mo agoI have the same feeling and I use evil-mode in Emacs because of that. It's basically Vim inside of Emacs.
- packetlost 4mo agoI tried evil-mode for awhile, but it had too many edge cases that behave differently so I went back /shrug
- hirvi74 4mo agoI have my instance set up to enable/disable evil via a keybinding. That way, the edge cases can be handled smoothly. There is also a way to configure evil so that emacs keybindings work while in Insert mode, but not in Normal or Visual mode, if that matters at all.
- allarm 4mo agoCtrl-z is the default keybinding to temporarily disable evil-mode; there's no need for a separate keybinding.
- chuckadams 4mo agoWhereas I cut my teeth on emacs in the early 90's, so modal is what felt awkward. I wouldn't dislike vim's modes so much if it just had one combination insert/append mode that worked like every other editor out there (including a couple other modal editors I've used), but even after adding various hacks to my vimrc to help unify the two modes, I still stumble over the behavior differences in other places. I really like the composable shorthand of vim's command set though, even if the only one I have in muscle memory is <esc>:wq
- packetlost 4mo agoHonestly, there are more "modern" editors with even more intuitive flows. Helix being one. I think the ideal editor for me would be something like a mix of Helix's shortcuts with structural regexp like in vis.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- xedrac 4mo agoI tried Helix for a few weeks and found it to be less efficient overall. Now granted it's hardly fair to compare 3 weeks to 20 years, so maybe with more time I might change my mind. I really missed vim's . key to repeat the last command for example. I think the learning curve for Helix is probably better than Vim, so if you haven't learned vim, it might be worth it. The other challenge though is the ubiquitous nature of vim and vim emulation.
- JadeNB 4mo ago> I wouldn't dislike vim's modes so much if it just had one combination insert/append mode that worked like every other editor out there (including a couple other modal editors I've used), but even after adding various hacks to my vimrc to help unify the two modes, I still stumble over the behavior differences in other places. To be fair, for most values of "every other editor out there," they came after vi (if not after vim), so it's not like vi was discarding existing wisdom.
- dantillberg 4mo agoEmacs key sequences are similarly stateful, and GP may hate that just as much, even if the state is temporary. For my part, in emacs I would often try ctrl-x-s to save, but miss the x. When I repeat the attempt, emacs register the complete but unknown key sequence ctrl-s-x followed by the start of a new key sequence with ctrl-s. I consider this similarly stateful because the behavior of "ctrl-s" changes entirely depending on what keystroke (if any) preceded it.
- jerf 4mo agoI don't like that aspect of emacs, but if you are a heavy-duty editor user it becomes difficult to arrange a consistent set of emacs shortcuts that aren't modal that don't conflict with anything else, because there's so many things you might want to do and so many pre-existing keyboard shortcuts that you can conflict with, not just in emacs but in your window manager. As a simple for-instance, I've got four or five keyboard shortcuts I added in the last year for dealing with the Claude windows in emacs that I've been using (the package defines a couple dozen, it's just about five I use a lot), and I didn't even try to figure out how to make them anything other than "C-c c $something" because it's hard to find somewhere they can go in any sort of pattern that makes any sense and doesn't conflict with anything. Fortunately most Unix window managers seem to leave the Windows key alone, but of course if I try to bring that to Windows it would fail miserably. I did remap my heaviest hitters a long time ago to single strokes, though. Most notably, start macro, end macro, and replay macro all got coveted non-modal shortcuts.
- jerf 4mo ago"I've always hated stateful control. Always ripped out caps lock key from my boards (or later figured out remapping), same for insert mode" You want some real fun, try the Microsoft Surface keyboard. Maybe they've fixed in a very recent version, but given how long the product line has had this problem, probably not. It has a stateful Fn key. That's right, a Fn key that works like capslock. There is no conceivable way this is a good idea. It means that if you actually want to use both "sides" of the Fn'd keys, you literally can not build muscle memory. If you hold the Fn key and press one of those keys, it'll do the "other" function, but if you just tap the Fn key, including because you had meant to press one of the keys but decided not to halfway through (which happens all the time, you just don't normally notice it because it's a completely normal thing to do that normally carries no consequences), you flip the polarity of the entire Fn key set. Now a normal press and a Fn-press do the opposite things. Until you flip it again. This is not a "oh, as a multi-decade key user I have opinions about whether key strokes should be 68dB or 72dB" question. This is basic functioning of the keyboard. It's insane. And, naturally, the key is "magic" and the OS can't see it. While I'm bitching, what is the deal with keyboards on new laptops needing special drivers? What the fuck is so special about your keyboard that you need drivers for it? I'll tell you what's so special about it: stuff you shouldn't be doing anyhow. My OS should be able to see and address all keys so I can remap them as needed. Your stupid special key that does your stupid special thing doesn't need to be a stupid special key. Make it a normal key and trigger your behavior in Windows, not in the hardware. Then I can use your stupid special key at least as a Meta or a Hyper or something. You don't need special drivers to have normal keys, you only need special drivers if you're doing something stupid. So there's no fixing the Fn key on these systems because it's one of the magic keys that can't be seen by the OS at all, so it can't be remapped, it can't be turned off, it can't be locked into one state, you can't do anything. You're just stuck with a keyboard that, from your brain's point of view, randomly swaps a couple of dozen keys around. Now I'm also on a programmable keyboard. This guy, to be precise: https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/0a26d32ac1e3b1d2af2896e00bb1177a https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/0a26d32ac1e3b1d2af2896e0... which I split across my chair so I've got one half under each hand when it is resting comfortably. That's something you can't get a laptop keyboard to do.
- chuckadams 4mo ago
- taeric 4mo agoAren't layers a form of stateful control?
- rgoulter 4mo agoSort of. The downside from the 'state' from Caps Lock is you have to keep track of whether it's active or not. Whereas with layers, typically a layer will only be active if you're holding down some kind of "activate layer" key.
- drivers99 4mo agoJef Raskin called those "quasimodes" in The Humane Interface (2000) and was in favor of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(user_interface)#Quasimodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(user_interface)#Quasimod...
- rgoulter 4mo agoThat's an apt term. Or more to the point: 'mode error' is exactly what the upthread comment is complaining about with the Caps Lock key.
- delecti 4mo agoCaps Lock is stateful control. The function of the keys changes depending on the internal state of the system. The "Fn" key on the keyboard in the article is also stateful (ish), and defaults to treating the F row as the special macros, rather than just F1-12. Keyboard layers work more like the Shift key.
- tremon 4mo agoPossibly, depending on how they're activated. If the layer is only activated while another key is pressed, that's not stateful (i.e. no different from yet another Fn key). I'd say that layer toggles and one-shot key modifiers are stateful control, yes. Personally, I've found that I prefer layer shift keys over layer toggles. It takes more mental effort to track in which layer I'm working than to hold a key while pressing another. The only persistent layer toggles I use is to switch the entire keyset to a different layout (qwerty vs workman vs single-handed, or switch the right half to numpad).
- rgoulter 4mo ago> I've switched to programmable ergo keyboards where there's a whole slew of options The best part of these kinds of keyboards is they provide each thumb two keys each. That allows for the keyboards to be much more expressive, as well as not needing the pinky for keys like backspace/enter/esc.
- setopt 4mo ago> not needing the pinky for keys like backspace/enter/esc. Probably not so efficient in terms of WPM, but after my previous issues with RSI, I somehow ended up pressing those keys with my middle fingers instead of my pinkie. Usually multiple fingers hit the key simultaneously, either long finger + ring finger or long finger + index finger. Requires more hand movement but certainly more comfortable.
- webstrand 4mo agoI wish I could remove the insert key, but unlike the caps-lock that no application rebinds, insert does get rebound. I wish there was an OS level control "pressing insert by accident should not turn on mangle-my-text-mode".