I swear sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the world that thinks hitting the ESC key is easy and no big deal.
Maybe it’s decades of doing it, and I don’t consider myself especially dexterous, but I never have any problem with it.
Maybe it’s decades of doing it, and I don’t consider myself especially dexterous, but I never have any problem with it.
I don't think pedals bring any significant ergonomic benefit, but pedal setups look cool nonetheless.
Swapping keys isn't interesting and you can't write a blog post about it.
"Some", sure, but "most"? Not so sure about that.
Besides, everyone knows what Ctrl is the One True Key™ in place of the Caps Lock and that only degenerate infidels map it to anything else.
Of course now you have to call your file descriptor something else. No free lunches.
I like it because my fingers never leave the home row.
Haha yeah I've heard about that and I like the joke =) But I was never interested in adopting it. Because I configure my alt keys to act as ctrl keys which imo results in a much more ergonomic setup.
Ctrl is the most pressed control key for people like me who live in the terminal. But the default placement of the ctrl keys in modern layouts is so wrong. I have never understood it. I guess there has to be a historical reason but I've yet to find out. (Help me, greybeards)
I should't have to move my hand and strain my pinky to reach out the most pressed control keys. With alt it's so much easier. I don't have to move my hands nor use my pinkies. My thumbs already rest on the spacebar and I just have to make a little thumb movement.
Swapping ctrl with caps lock is an ok remedy but alt keys are in a much better place.
So ctrl goes where alt is by default.
But do I swap ctrl with alt? No!! Alt is a frequently used key as well so the default ctrl keys aren't a good fit for alt either. Instead I set the keys immediately adjacent to the default alt keys to act as alt. It's the Super key (sometimes referred as the "Windows" key) on the left side and the context menu key on the right.
Lastly, I set the default left ctrl key to act as Super and the right ctrl key to act as context. Because I virtually never use those.
(I think Apple got this mostly right. cmd is the most used control key for the average Apple user, and opt is next. Their placements are perfect. Though it's still problematic for developers as ctrl is again at the worst place possible. Because of that, what I do in Macs is swapping ctrl with cmd while leaving opt where they are.)
If I'm an infidel for doing this so be it. But with this setup, I'm extremely efficient one. I type and code and enter & exit from repls and jump between interfaces like a damn machine, impressing mostly everybody who watch me use my computer.
Ergonomics FTW
I've seen this talk here and the speaker mentioned the ADM-3A (that is also mentioned in the article itself) terminals at about the 17/18 minute mark. Mind the keyboard layout :)
https://jackrusher.com/strange-loop-2022/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A
It's just what I'm used to. I grew up on the MSX which, like many keyboards of its day, had Ctrl where we now have Caps Lock. When we upgraded (well, "upgraded") to Windows 95 I found some hack to make CapsLock behave like Ctrl because I was so used to it. Later I started using Linux and BSD and of course carried over the mapping with xmodmap. I've never really known anything else than Caps Lock being Ctrl.
Another oddity from my MSX days that took me years to get rid of was that a line would only be saved if you pressed "enter" at the end of it. That is, if you were editing some file, went up a line, edited it, and then just went down a line (without pressing enter) it wouldn't actually get saved. It took me quite a long time to get rid of the habit of "End + Enter" to make sure the line got saved (which wasn't needed on any other system I've used).
Japanese keyboards have extra keys near space. It's possible with software to remap those keys to something else like Ctrl. Really wish more keyboards had usable thumb keys...
Both my Ubuntu and OSX machines are setup so that just pressing Caps Lock alone = escape, and holding Caps Lock = control.
For the curious, to do this in OSX I use Karabiner + a "complex modification" (i.e. import a small JSON config). And for Ubuntu I use a few 'xcape' commands that autorun on startup.
The basic concept was to use a pedal to enable switching between normal and insert modes. In Vim’s predecessor, vi, switching modes was easy, with the ESC key located neatly by the Q on the keyboard of the ADM-3A terminal. On modern keyboards, though, it’s a pain, and so a foot pedal is a desirable solution.
So let me get this straight... it is easier to blindly grope for a foot pedal somewhere under a desk than it is to hit that very visible, very close-at-hand key on the keyboard with whatever appendage happens to be closest? Of course it isn't, this is just rationalisation for making that foot pedal - as if any reason is needed to indulge in such projects other than 'because I (want to find out if I) can'.
Every ThinkPad I've had since then has been a regression in this department, beginning with the X201s and now I'm on an X230 and my typing is awful compared to the 4:3 X-series glory days. Reaching for the ESC key is noticably annoying compared to what I know so well to be the ideal. Why Lenovo kept stretching the keyboard to accommodate their widescreen transition instead of relocating better speakers to the keyboard flanks is beyond me.
But having suffered through this mess I fully understand why vi(m) users remap ESC to CAPS or pursue other mitigations. ESC key access is highly sensitive to keyboard-size:hand-size, and I suspect for many it's just inconveniently distant like my X230 is for me.
(And I don’t want to use Caps Lock for that, Backspace on the other corner of the keyboard is far less convenient, that’s what I want Caps Lock to be.)
If you don't move your hand, you'll have to stretch your fingers, and might be better suited to a minimalist keyboard with function layers.