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Comment by rijoja | Hacker News Reader

Because the escape key heavily used by VIM was placed there since it used to have the position of where the caps lock is currently located. Hence all elite users map the escape key to the caps lock key. As far as the arrow keys are concerned the keyboard used for the original vim had arrow keys placed on the keys h,j,k & l. Which is what real hackers use to navigate apparently.

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This is not the case. The ADM-3A keyboard (which vi was developed for use upon) had Esc where Tab is now commonly located, and Ctrl where Caps Lock is now commonly located.

I stand corrected still it explains the lack of an escape key though.

Not sure I qualify as an “elite” but I’ve never seen an original keyboard with the escape where thr caps is on a modern keyboard.

I’ve seen them in the place of the tab key but never on the home row.

Personally, as a long time Vi user, I think you’re better off mapping the caps key to Ctrl and using C-[ for escape. That leaves you with many more Vim insert mode commands within easy reach.

E.g. C-r <buffer> — to put a buffer

C-h — backspace

C-i — tab

C-m — CR

C-xC-f — complete filename

Etc, etc.

h,j,k & l are really only the simplest od vi navigation keys. Once you know how to, say, jump to 3rd paragraph or to jump or to the middle of the screen you won’t use them anywhere near as much.

Much as I love vi navigation owning a Pok3r keyboard has shown me how annoying it is to not have dedicated cursor keys for GUI applications.

I have Caps remapped to Esc and Ctrl swapped with Alt. This way both Ctrl and Esc are easy to reach, and my left pinky doesn't hurt.

Any keyboard can do it, it's just a software thing. Mac even supports switching the Caps lock to escape in the system preferences.

Yep. It’s portability is what I love about it.

You can easily remap escape on the "Mouse" key (which is where Caps Lock is on most keyboards) using the agent software that comes with it.

Not all elite users- I generally use C-[ to return to normal mode, and prefer to use caps as an fn modifier key on my UHK.

Ctrl-c can be used to exit insert mode as well. Caps-lock key was also historically the location of the ctrl key.

Ctrl-c is a poor substitute for escape as it messes up your history and stops things like mutiline visual inserts working.

You’re better off using ctrl-[ which is exactly the same as escape in functionality.

truly elite us keyboard users map caps lock to ctrl and, when forced to use vim, use ctrl+[ to change modes.

(ctrl is useful enough in vim to merit that binding, even if you are a full time vimmer)

True elite users overload capslock to act as esc when pressed short and as ctrl when pressed long. I wonder whether this UHK supports this too.

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