2 ms·

Must be a fun exercise using hjkl on dvorak. I think I would end up remapping the whole normal mode to the same positions of a qwerty keyboard.

to3m 14y ago
J and K are the C and V keys respectively, and H and L are the J and P keys respectively - so it's not too bad, though hardly ideal. My use of a dvorak keyboard is probably why I never bothered with H and L when using vim, and only very rarely used J and K. I just used the arrow keys, if I wanted to move one cell at a time. (I never really saw the point of trying to make people use hjkl for cursor navigation. You should try always to use higher-level navigations commands, and if you move cell by cell, you've lost already! - so there's nothing wrong with using the arrow keys for it rather than hjkl. That is, after all, what the arrow keys are there for.)
peeters 14y ago
I used vim with colemak for a while. It's really, really hard to customize because some commands are mapped according to their position (hjkl) and others are mapped according to their initial ("y" for "yank", e.g.). Trying to keep both is thus impossible, as there are collisions. So your options are: 1) Preserve position, and remap everything back to its qwerty location. Downside: you have to train yourself that you're not pressing "n" for next, you're pressing "k". 2) Don't remap anything. Downside: nothing is ergonomic anymore. 3) Keep positional keys in their correct position, assign mnemonic keys when they don't collide with the positional keys and choose new mnemonics when there are collisions. Downside: only you can ever use your vim. The best support I saw was for #3 but it ended up being a deal-breaker since I pair program (but that's OK, because using colemak itself ended up being a deal-breaker since I pair).
- emileswarts 14y ago
  I also switched to colemak but things are still good in vim. You got your n key under your right index finger, and I use searching for long range jumps. Vim was designed for qwerty not colemak, so you do have to compensate in some areas but I feel that just the efficiency colemak provides to typing english makes up for it.

to3m 14y ago

J and K are the C and V keys respectively, and H and L are the J and P keys respectively - so it's not too bad, though hardly ideal. My use of a dvorak keyboard is probably why I never bothered with H and L when using vim, and only very rarely used J and K. I just used the arrow keys, if I wanted to move one cell at a time. (I never really saw the point of trying to make people use hjkl for cursor navigation. You should try always to use higher-level navigations commands, and if you move cell by cell, you've lost already! - so there's nothing wrong with using the arrow keys for it rather than hjkl. That is, after all, what the arrow keys are there for.)

peeters 14y ago

I used vim with colemak for a while. It's really, really hard to customize because some commands are mapped according to their position (hjkl) and others are mapped according to their initial ("y" for "yank", e.g.). Trying to keep both is thus impossible, as there are collisions. So your options are: 1) Preserve position, and remap everything back to its qwerty location. Downside: you have to train yourself that you're not pressing "n" for next, you're pressing "k". 2) Don't remap anything. Downside: nothing is ergonomic anymore. 3) Keep positional keys in their correct position, assign mnemonic keys when they don't collide with the positional keys and choose new mnemonics when there are collisions. Downside: only you can ever use your vim. The best support I saw was for #3 but it ended up being a deal-breaker since I pair program (but that's OK, because using colemak itself ended up being a deal-breaker since I pair).

emileswarts 14y ago
I also switched to colemak but things are still good in vim. You got your n key under your right index finger, and I use searching for long range jumps. Vim was designed for qwerty not colemak, so you do have to compensate in some areas but I feel that just the efficiency colemak provides to typing english makes up for it.