Thursday, March 4, 2021

Re: vim-mnemonics for hjkl.

On Tue, Mar 02, 2021 at 02:14:29AM -0800, hongy...@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.

The big advantage of hjkl navigation is that it leverages
the home keys for touch typing on a QWERTY keyboard for
what is for many people the dominant right hand. Under
this system and with right hand at the home key positions:

index finger (j)umps down,
middle finger (k)limbs ups,
slide index finger left and (h)urtle left--(h) hangs near (j),
ringer finger to (l)eft of middle finger (l)urches left

Others have already said that "j" looks a bit like an
arrow down symbol, so I used to use this to remind myself
when it was new to me.

Honestly for me, the big reason I learned to rely on hjkl
navigation, had naught to do with being an old-timer
before marked arrow keys and everything to do with playing
Roguelike games such as Angband and UMoria using the
roguelike key command set:
https://rephial.org/help/playing
In such games the arrow keys work, but it saves time not
needing to reach for the arrow keys then hunt and peck for
the letter keys. Essentially, this is the same reason to
use hjkl navigation for text editing.

There is certain elegance to being able to call legacy
game play "training" with a modicum of seriousness. :)

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