[GLLUG] vim ESC

[george at idealso.com]

> I think Brent's main point was that vi seems to be very well
> engineered
> for editing speed as much as editing power. And it does a fantastic
> job of
> that except for the lonely and distant Esc key on today's keyboards.
>
> I would guess that back in the day, the Esc key wasn't always
> positioned
> so far away from everyone else on the keyboard. On those terminals,
> exiting insert mode probably didn't require your hand to leave the
> home
> row. Now, it always does because the IBM PC keyboard layout has come
> to be
> the de facto on pretty much every keyboard.
>
> I've toyed with the idea of somehow remapping ` to Esc since I never
> use a
> backtick for anything. Haven't quite had the motivation to follow
> through,
> though.

Very long ago I worked out the xmodmap files required to swap the
Caps Lock with the Left Control, the Backspace with the
Backslash/Vert. Bar, and the Back Quote/Tilde to the Right Alt and
Esc. to the Backtick key.  It's not quite the good ol' Sun Type 4,
but it's a vast improvement for Unix use than the defecto standard.

For a really nice key layout, check out the Happy Hacking keyboard:
http://pfuca-store.stores.yahoo.net/haphackeylit1.html

For Windoze and Mac, where I've had a harder time learning how to
remap, a programmable keyboard does the trick.