Hacker News Reader

Comment by yellow_postit | Hacker News Reader

Apple shot themselves in the foot for this market with the touch bar. It adds such a small amount of utility for annoying every VIM user.

View on HN

15 year VI and VIM user here. This is a stupid complaint: anyone seriously using VIM remapped Escape a long time ago, or learned to use Ctrl+[.

I've been using vim seriously for years, and I've had escape on capslock for many of them. However, not all users know how to do that or haven't thought of the amazing benefits that can be obtained. There's people who are only picking up vim today. Give them a chance.

To those who haven't: Give it a go. Put Escape on Caps lock. If you've got Control there and you're running Linux or Windows with a standard PC keyboard, you probably actually want to swap Control and Alt. If you haven't, you probably want to swap Control and Alt anyway. (This will give you bindings similar to the Mac's Command key. The thumb is a much stronger finger and far more suited to these combinations than the weak pinky.)

I got lucky on that one! I have been remapping caps lock to escape for years now on every machine I use. It's great, until I need to use literally anybody else's machine.

I have the same experience with the Dvorak layout, which is what I used when I learned to type, at age... um... nine? People crack up when I try to type on anyone else's machine, because my WPM drops by a factor of ten.

This is part of the reason I basically refuse to customize anything on a new linux machine; my needs are already weird enough that I'd rather just adapt myself to the defaults for everything else.

Not to mention every IntelliJ user, and every touch typist.

Vim users commonly map escape to caps-lock.

I don't, because my agency uses a very locked down Windows env and I can't even remap keys (shell?! You jest....)

Then you don’t have the touchbar anyway.

No, my main work environment makes the remapping inaccessible, so I have declined to buy a touchbar. A consultant offered me one free and I still declined, requesting an original rMBP instead.

> map! jk <Esc>

Remap the sequence "jk" to escape, you don't even have to take your hand off the home row to exit a mode.

Caps to Ctrl

Ctrl to Escape

Escape to Caps

I mostly use Ctrl-[ for Escape. I have a lot or weird Ctrl bindings. Not an emacs level of Ctrl bindings, but enough that I use this particular rearrangement.

> It adds such a small amount of utility for annoying every VIM user.

You have to love Emacs and Vim users.

Quite sure Apple's world doesn't revolve around the needs of such a small user base.

FWIW I'm an Emacs user on a MBP with Touch Bar.

No issues.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com