Re: VIM: best way to swap the Caps and esc, but JUST for vim

On 17.06.12 11:25, ping song wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 10:18 AM, ping song <songpingemail@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't want to affact other users/apps since this is not just my PC...
> > what's the best practice so far to just swap the 2 keys for VIM? or at
> > least, change caps to esc. most/all answers I got involves a
> > system-wide configuration... thanks!

AIUI, then, the core need is to make the mapping just for one user.

The method I've become addicted to is user-specific, because the
keyboard mapping is put in ~/.Xmodmap, not the system-wide file:

$ cat ~/.Xmodmap
keycode 0x42 = Escape
clear Lock

(Admittedly, that only moves Esc to Capslock, because I've never found
Capslock useful, but it's easy enough to do two-way swaps.)

If it is inconvenient for the alternate user to have to restart X, as
another user, then there are enough examples of how to use "xmodmap -e"
to flip keymappings back and forth on the fly, under the heading
"EXAMPLES" in man xmodmap.

The example which swaps Caps_Lock and Control_L could be tweaked to swap
with Esc instead of the Left Control key. Although the manpage is not
specific, I figure that you'd put the half a dozen lines into
~/.my_esc_toggle_thingy and do:

$ xmodmap ~/.my_esc_toggle_thingy

which in Vim should be mappable to a function key, or whatever.
Alternatively, a simple shell alias could automate it:

alias vim='xmodmap ~/.mett ; /usr/bin/vim ; xmodmap ~/.mett'

(Shorter name, to avoid wrapping in the email.)

The only problem with that is that now it _is_ only for Vim, so you lose
keyboard consistency across applications. Still, it is what the subject
line asks for.

Give either method a try, and tell us how it went. ;-)

Erik

--
Unix isn't hard, it's just a lot. (Ascribed to one of its originators)

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