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Comment by Veen | Hacker News Reader

> I've been told to remap the ESC to CAPS LOCK to vim usage, but I seem to be one of a rare breed who uses the latter the way it was intended to be, so that's a no go for me.

Not really relevant, but when Vi was originally developed, the escape key was in a more convenient location — right where the tab key is now. It was never intended for users to have to reach that far to hit such an essential key.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3aKB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg

Edit: also, Control-c and control-[ do the same thing.

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> Edit: also, Control-c and control-[ do the same thing.

They're not actually the same. C-[ is the same as Esc but C-c is not.

Using C-c to leave Insert mode won't trigger InsertLeave.

If you select a vertical visual block and insert a comma at the end of each line E.g. C-v}$A, Using Esc or C-[ to leave insert mode will insert the comma at the end of every line in the paragraph but using C-c will only insert after the first line.

Also if you get used then to using C-c in Vim then you'll potentially run into issues if you try to use it in other Vi places e.g. anything that uses readline or your shell.

IMHO C-[ is a much better solution for these reasons.

You can get C-c to be pretty much identical with a little remap

:imap <C-c> <Esc>

Remapping caps lock would be good too, but I already have caps lock remapped to Ctrl and I'm just used to that. In anticipation of what seemed like the inevitable loss of my escape key, I've been trying really really hard to like Ctrl-[ the last three weeks, but I've just given up. I keep opening up Ctrl-P searches or hitting Ctrl-]. My pinky just can't do it. So I've given up and made Ctrl-C work and it's so much better.

> You can get C-c to be pretty much identical with a little remap > :imap <C-c> <Esc>

True but you're still out of luck in other Vi like places.

As an alternative I used Karabina in the past to map Caps lock into Esc (when pressed and released) and Ctrl (when pressed with another key). I think you could also make it latch as Caps lock by using Caps-Shift but I'm not 100% on that.

Does anyone know if Karabina has been updated to work with Siera yet?

I assume you mean Karabiner. Their page still has a notice that it doesn't work with macOS Sierra.

https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/

I did mean Karabiner, thanks for the catch.

I've stayed El Capitan because I couldn't think of anything I found compelling in Sierra. I'll probably reconsider when Karabiner-Elements becomes a suitable replacement.

True but you're still out of luck in other Vi like places.

Agreed. I use set -o vi in bash and of course my little remapping is of no use there.

As an alternative I used Karabina in the past to map Caps lock into Esc (when pressed and released) and Ctrl (when pressed with another key).

This was something else I had suggested to me, but while probably about 50% of my computer use on a daily basis is on OSX, the other 50% is linux; for all of xkb's data-driven flexibility, I'm not sure whether it can do something like this. And I can't afford to build muscle memory for something I can only use on one platform.

It can. I've been using Caps Lock as Escape across Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X for 7 years now. The various gui interfaces to xmodmap even have an option to do the flip for you (at least in GNOME, Cinnamon, and KDE).

I've been using Caps Lock as Escape

That's easy - what @Lio was talking about was having Caps Lock be a tap for <Esc> and then holding it with another key would be <C->. Is that what you're talking about? Karabiner can accomplish this on macOS, but I can't find a gconf/gsetting/xmodmap combination to do this on Linux. Caps Lock as Escape is easy. Caps Lock as Ctrl is easy. Caps Lock as both doesn't seem to be possible on Linux.

Am I wrong? Can you point me toward more info on this? I'd really appreciate it - I would so love to be able to use tap-for-escape in all readline contexts.

That is exactly what I meant.

The worry about building up muscle memory around something not portable is exactly what lead me to force myself to use C-[ as Escape too.

I aslo remap caps to ctrl everywhere.

For vim, you can map tab to being your new esc. Chances are you are using expandtab option, so actual tab usage is not big (it exists though, left here as an exercise for a reader )

Anyway im moving to kabylake dell xps 13. After 9 years with apple. Windows from 2016 gives much better linux integration. And its good to challenge yourselfe with such a big change every 10 years. Its bicycle for your mind (c) Jobs.

If you did remap tab to Escape in Vim you could still use C-i for tab as an alternative.

Other neat insert mode shortcuts include C-h for Backspace, C-m for Return and indent/outdent with C-t and C-d.

In addition to considering a 2015 MBP refurb, I am also thinking about an XPS 15.

I find Windows 10 to be an enormous improvement over 7 and 8; they finally fixed some of the stupid little things that have been issues since NT 3.1. Like the awful terminal emulator or the dialog box for editing environment variables. It seems like Microsoft is finally being run by someone who cares about details.

> I seem to be one of a rare breed who uses the latter the way it was intended to be

I am intrigued; what's your use case that requires so much uppercase text?

Work: a metric ton of #defines that are generated by our hardware register addressmap generator, as well as a very particular file naming convention, which has a heavy mix of uppercase.

I actually think this is very relevant, just unknown! It's something I always wondered about Vi, the ESC key is just out of reach of the home row, making it a strange choice for a fundamental operation.

Yes, the old Apollo HP workstations (on which I initially learned vi before it became vim), ESC close to the left shift. Very convenient.

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