Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Re: vim-mnemonics for hjkl.

Schöne Grüße

Niels

> On 2. Mar 2021, at 12:08, Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
>
> 
>> On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 02:14:29 -0800 (PST)
>> "hongy...@gmail.com" <hongyi.zhao@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I noticed the following mnemonics for vim shortcut keys from
>> <https://gist.github.com/iambrj/1e4de522ef5dcf13f530bb4b58cd9b32>:
>>
>> <quote>
>>
>> h: left
>>
>> j: down
>>
>> k: up
>>
>> l: right
>>
>> </quote>
>>
>> But I still can't figure out the correspondence between their literal
>> representation and the operations of them. Any hints will be highly
>> appreciated.
>
> I think it's mostly a matter of ease. It's all done from touch typist
> home position, with one hand. Back then there was no mouse, so they
> chose the right hand, dominant on the majority of people, as that hand.
> I'd guess if mice had existed universally when vi was created, the
> cursor keys would have been done by the left hand so the user could
> keep his or her right hand on the mouse.
>
> I think the mnemonics were in the fingers, not in the brain.

Iirc the keyboard the original was developed in had even arrow-symbols in hjkl
It is more about the original keyboard than mnemonics or touch typing I think. Same reason for Escape to switch between modes which was on that keyboard where caps lock is today.

Niels

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