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Comment by marshray | Hacker News Reader

I map semicolon to <Esc>, and ctrl-l to insert a semicolon in insert mode.

<Esc> is one of the most frequent commands, no reason it should be on one of the farthest keys.

<Ctrl-C> works the same as <Esc> and does the same job of jumping back into normal mode.

Ctrl-[, too. But for some reason it's not as smooth for me. This idea of mapping semicolon came from a command layout rethink experiment I originally did on emacs. Always been meaning to reconstruct that more fully some day. Vim doesn't make it possible to define new first-class modes, so it will probably have to be a from-scratch editor (if I ever get around to it).

Or bind Caps Lock to <Esc>:

     $ xmodmap -e "clear lock"; xmodmap -e "keycode 0x42 = Escape"

I'm hooked on Caps Lock being an additional Ctrl. That helps for emacs-style bindings too (like bash).

I have mapped Caps Lock to switch between input and command mode. I use F10 as a "placeholder" to avoid triggering an actual changing of caps lock mode.

    # .Xmodmap:
    keycode 66 = F10
    clear Lock

    # .vimrc
    imap <F10> <ESC>
    nmap <F10> i

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