On 08/04/10 14:14, Duane Johnson wrote:
Thanks for your insights, Tony. I think these will be particularly
useful to an intermediate Vim user, although diving in to these
resources as a beginner certainly won't hurt.
I think what I'm looking for is something like vimtutor, but just
slanted a little more toward developing muscle-memory. I want a solid
base of knowing that "w" goes to the next word, and that "h" means
left and "l" means right, for example. I know this sort of thing is
probably ridiculously easy for you, but that's where I'm at.
Thanks,
Duane
Well, maybe I'll surprise you, and I've got my share of flames for
saying this but I'll keep saying it again and again: Vim supports the
cursor movement keys and the mouse, we may use them. The way I see it,
it is no more Vim-like to insist on keeping one's hands manacled on (on
my fr_BE AZERTY keyboard) the QSDFghJKLM keys (with the ones I typed in
lowercase between both index fingers), than it is Chopin-like,
Mozart-like or Bach-like to insist on keeping one's hands manacled next
to each other with middle C on hitting distance from both thumbs -- and,
in the case of Bach, on the Hauptklavier only with exclusion of both
Positiv and Pedal (I know, it's not with his hands that Bach activated
the Pedalklavier). Bach, remember, had a special harpsichord at home,
with several keyboards and even a foot-keyboard, so that he could
practice organ pieces at home without having to hire helpers to move the
blowers on the church's organ -- electricity didn't exist yet.
To go back to Vim, I've mapped <Up> and <Down> to gk and gj
respectively, so they aren't the same as k and j anymore, and for
lateral movement I don't hesitate to move my hand "to the higher octave"
to hit <Left> and <Right> -- and I also use <PageUp> and <PageDown>. And
when moving the cursor to something that's a weild number of lines and
columns from where it is now, maybe to correct a typo that I made three
paragraphs back and only see now, I get there much faster by clicking
the mouse, or even moving then dragging to create a Select-mode
highlight, than I would by painstakingly repeating hjkl. Similarly, I
may or may not remember that b goes to begin-of-word and e goes to
end-of-word (apparently, I do), but Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right work in Vim
just like they used to in Notepad to move by words (which is in praise
of Vim, not of Notepad -- and Ctrl-Right is not the same as e). The
virtuoso pianist does not hesitate to move his (or her) hands from one
octave to the next and the next, I'll keep saying that the virtuoso
Vimmer -- and even the beginner -- must not hesitate to move his (or
her) hands -- and especially the right hand -- between the main
keyboard, the movement keys, the numeric keypad and the mouse. Don't
cripple yourself, you'll never win the Queen Elizabeth competition if
you do.
As for h meaning left and l meaning right, it helps that h is to the
left and l to the right of the right hand's home position on AZERTY,
QWERTY and QWERTZ keyboards -- but maybe yours is a Dvorak? Similarly,
the trick for j and k is that j has a tail going down and k has one
going up. Childish, maybe, but just as useful as remembering the KNAP
interjection (for Kathode Negative, Anode Positive) in high-school
chemistry -- and yes, the proper English or French spelling of cathode
is with a C but this trick is about connecting electrodes, not about
spelling.
Don't downplay the vimtutor: that's where I learnt all those keys you
have trouble remembering. If you can't remember them at one sitting,
then run the tutor again -- or alternate the vimtutor with the
gvimtutor. Same melody, different instrument.
Best regards,
Tony.
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