Hi Laurent :)
* vim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> dixit:
> The idea behind using h/j/k/l is to avoid moving your hand/wrist too
> often while going back and forth between your keyboard and the arrow set
> (although the use of h/j/k/l might have originated for other reasons
> back in the old 'vi' days).
Hitting ESC doesn't make your wrist move? I may have a very small
hand, but I have to move my left hand for hitting ESC.
I suspect that the main reason behind the hjkl (which is very
unnatural for me, the arrows have a much better design with the inverted
T at least IMHO) was that the first keyboards used to develop/use vi
probably hadn't arrow keys, or they were very far at the right of the
keyboard.
Of course I may be wrong here, I wasn't there ;)) but at least in my
case, the most moving I do is *when inserting text* (well, when
modifying existing text, to be more precise), and using ESC and the
different motion commands slows down my editing a lot. Using the arrow
keys and the Home/End, PgUp/PgDn keys makes my editing much faster. I'm
a touch typer, and I can find my position again in the keyboard pretty
fast, but I find more difficult to do it after hitting ESC than after
using the arrow keys.
In addition to this, my touch typing position is with my index
finger on the 'j', and not the 'h'. To hit 'h' I must displace my index
finger and that's slower for motion than having my fingers on the
inverted "T".
Weren't for the ESC key to go to normal mode, I will never use the
arrows, just because having the hands in touch typing position is much
faster, period. But hitting the ESC key to go to normal mode, hit a
couple of keys for doing the movement and hitting 'i' again is slower
than keeping in insert mode and using the arrows, at least for me.
Probably if I had learnt to use an editor with vi, I will get used
to hit the ESC and change modes fast, but I hadn't and now hitting ESC
is very unnatural to me, even though I use it in my shell to clean the
command line!.
It's just a mental attitude, I know, but... What I try to mean with
this message is that hjkl is not necessarily faster even if you touch
type.
Raúl Núñez de Arenas Coronado
--
Linux Registered User 88736 | http://www.dervishd.net
It's my PC and I'll cry if I want to... RAmen!
