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Modeless Vim

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Re: Modeless Vim

#261

Post by wruza »

laserbeam wrote: post #146
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can learn the basics in under 15 minutes.

I agree with the aurhor of the library. > Q: Why don't you just learn the vim commands? > A: I did, but if you don't use vim regularly, you keep forgetting them. The basics are only useful in vim, and editors that you force into vim mode. Other places one types text into which use the same conventions absent in vim: browser input fields, the url bar, email, office software, random input fields in games (I've seen sin…

As a vimer, this is absolutely true. Learning is repetition, not just reading. And we don’t have time to learn something we rarely use.

For the same reason I can never even think of writing in ahk, awk, bash, scss and other arcane syntaxes without examples and snippets. Because the usage is occasional.

And I definitely hit Esc and lost my input too many times. Of course the apps that don’t ask for Esc confirmation are to blame, but they exist.

Re: Modeless Vim

#262

Post by joenot443 »

cassepipe wrote: post #239

My usual comment on any thread touching vim, as an answer to all hypothetical comments talking about how vim never clicked : Remap the Escape key to CapsLock else you will never like vim (provided you are a normal person) It's the most important key and you should punctuate all your inserts with it. So it'd better not be the key that's the furthest away from your fingers. The reason that's the case is an historical a…

> Remap the Escape key to CapsLock else you will never like vim (provided you are a normal person)

I think this is great advice for EVERYONE, vim user or not. Someone else made this suggestion on HN some 8 years ago and I haven't looked back since.

CapsLock is essentially useless for modern computing needs, but having a No/Cancel/Quit/Esc button immediately under your left pinky is fantastic. Your brain will get used to it in a day or so, give it a try!

Re: Modeless Vim

#263

Post by hmeh »

carb wrote: post #252
wruza wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Doesn’t mean it’s good” doesn’t mean it’s a problem either. Also, people prone to remapping already have their Ctrl there.

Yeah I use Ctrl far more often than Esc as I'm usually navigating code and reading it vs writing it, so Caps Lock -> Ctrl is more valuable. Additionally, I use Ctrl outside of vim very frequently as I keep my terminal key bindings native, which means all of the command line control patterns use Ctrl (jump to front, jump to back, cut (forwards/backwards), move by word, reverse search, etc etc) I'm still of the opinion…

Por que no los dos? I map caps lock to escape on tap, ctrl on hold.

Re: Modeless Vim

#264

Post by joenot443 »

mypalmike wrote: post #205
redundantly wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like installing a V8 in a Tesla, or replacing the pumpkin in pumpkin pie. Most pumpkin pies are actually made with butternut squash and other similar squashes, not pumpkin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbita_moschata https://www.thekitchn.com/whats-actually-in-your-canned-pump...

If you'd left off "not pumpkin", you'd be technically correct. But it's a somewhat nuanced topic. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/canned-pumpkin-isnt-actual... [I'll just add one more note, not mentioned in the article, which is that typical Jack-o'-lantern pumpkins are quite awful for cooking. Much worse than any canned pumpkin. If you want to cook with fresh pumpkin, research the varietals that are known for good…

> As much of 90 percent of pumpkin sold in the U.S. (and 85 percent worldwide) is a proprietary cultivar known as a Dickinson pumpkin, which are less photogenic than the type of pumpkins commonly used for display purposes.

Ugh, they really are much less aesthetic than a nice plump orange one. This feels similar to the childhood realization that regardless of the name or the box color there's not really much strawberry juice in anything; it's all apple and pear.

Re: Modeless Vim

#265

Post by dinkleberg »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #257
camtarn wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remap the Escape key to CapsLock else you will never like vim (provided you are a normal person) I guess I'm not a normal person then? Never bothered doing the remapping and I've been an enthusiastic Vim user for a decade.

Smacking the escape key constantly is probably my favorite part of using Vim. It has me smacking escape all the time to see what it does in other apps. I love when esc is just mapped to a "stop doing that" or "go back". Also doing embedded stuff, I find the caps lock key nice for when typing out a few defines or macros.

Haha I’d hate to know the number of form modals I’ve closed out of after instinctively hitting escape.

Re: Modeless Vim

#266

Post by quesera »

globular-toast wrote: post #167
jjcm wrote: post #37

Conceptually the reasons the author give for this (syntax highlighting and other features of vim outclass other terminal-based editors) make total sense. That said there's something absolutely defiling about this. It's like installing a V8 in a Tesla, or replacing the pumpkin in pumpkin pie. I love that it will make VIM more accessible for more people, but I hate how they do it. Kudos to the author.

Emacs runs in a terminal. Vim isn't installed everywhere, Vi is. If you're going to install an editor and a config you might as well just install Emacs.

I believe only the BSDs install real vi in the base OS.

Everywhere else, when you type vi, you get vim. Some neophile Linux distros provide neovim instead.

Regardless, vi and vim (and neovim) are the same in basic operations.

It's still functionally correct that "vi is always installed" and no additional action is necessary for basic text editing.

Re: Modeless Vim

#267

Post by zeroxfe »

joenot443 wrote: post #262
cassepipe wrote: post #239

My usual comment on any thread touching vim, as an answer to all hypothetical comments talking about how vim never clicked : Remap the Escape key to CapsLock else you will never like vim (provided you are a normal person) It's the most important key and you should punctuate all your inserts with it. So it'd better not be the key that's the furthest away from your fingers. The reason that's the case is an historical a…

> Remap the Escape key to CapsLock else you will never like vim (provided you are a normal person) I think this is great advice for EVERYONE, vim user or not. Someone else made this suggestion on HN some 8 years ago and I haven't looked back since. CapsLock is essentially useless for modern computing needs, but having a No/Cancel/Quit/Esc button immediately under your left pinky is fantastic. Your brain will get used…

Yes, CapsLock is useless, and I've been remapping it to Ctrl since forever, which serves me a lot more than Esc.

Re: Modeless Vim

#269

Post by micheljansen »

RMPR wrote: post #222
micheljansen wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice! I have memorised a lot of Vim actions over the years, but this would still absolutely help me a lot. I would love to have this for (Neo)Vim.

There's a plugin for that called which-keys

Thanks, this sent me down a rabbit hole of NeoVim plugins, but I've enabled it now :)

Re: Modeless Vim

#270

Post by sodapopcan »

cassepipe wrote: post #239

My usual comment on any thread touching vim, as an answer to all hypothetical comments talking about how vim never clicked : Remap the Escape key to CapsLock else you will never like vim (provided you are a normal person) It's the most important key and you should punctuate all your inserts with it. So it'd better not be the key that's the furthest away from your fingers. The reason that's the case is an historical a…

> Ctrl+C

...and to try and avoid this being perpetuated as it always seems to: ctrl-c is NOT the identical to escape. Notably is doesn't trigger InsertLeave which means a handful of plugins won't trigger.

I think your advice can be summed up to: Remap esc to something more convenient. My capslock key is tap for escape and hold for ctrl. I use jk for escaping insert mode because why would I want to be a "victim" who has to stretch their pinky even one key when my fingers are always going to rest on JK? ;)

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