On 29/11/08 09:36, Max Waterman wrote: > Hi, > > I've worked in the UK, US, China and now Finland. I'm a long time (since > 1984) vi user, and it's been several years since I started using vim, > gradually using more and more vim-specific features. > > On my travels, I've met a few emacs users, but not too many (<10) and > the majority seemed to use vi or some other graphical editor. > > However, I am now working in Finland, and almost everyone I've met uses > emacs. Furthermore, it seems no-one uses vi/vim, and they seem amazed > that anyone would use vi/vim - they seem to absolutely hate it. I would > have expected *some* to use it - I know there are a few, but vastly > fewer than in other places I've been. > > It was quite a shock, but only after a few months have I come up with a > theory why this is, and this is my theory : > > The keyboard. > > I became used to a US keyboard in the US, but even going back to the UK > on occasion, I find it quite easy to use vi. I have my own 'favourite' > keyboard that I try to take with me everywhere, so I don't have to use a > Finnish keyboard much; but I do have to sometimes, and I find that using > vi is a pain on a Finnish keyboard. > > At first, I thought it was just that I wasn't familiar with the keys in > the different positions, but I notice that some keys I commonly use are > much more awkward to use - for example, '/' is something like shirt-7. > > On the other hand, many keys are quite similar, so I could well be > wrong, but it made me at least consider it as a possibility. > > Are there any studies on this sort of this? IE, frequency of key use in > programming and the relationship between the most used keys and their > positions on the various keyboards? > > Max.
Well, I think it all depends what one would consider "easy". What are typical Emacs-like keyboard commands? Ctrl-Shift-Alt-Q Ctrl-Alt-B Shift-Alt-M Ctrl-Shift-G maybe? (I don't know Emacs) I wouldn't regard that as "easier" than where some special keys are on my Belgian keyboard (backslash between left-shift and W, vertical bar on the 1 key, atsign on the 2 key, # on the 3 key, left brace on the 9 key, right brace on the zero key, [ and ] on the two keys between P and the upper part of the Enter key, all of them with AltGr). If the location of / and ? don't please you, with Vim you can easily remap them to something else, ä and ö maybe, or maybe ä and Ä which I suppose are on the same key with only Shift making the difference. ;-) Best regards, Tony. -- Personifiers Unite! You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
