Happy birthday, vim!

[hashbaz]

vim's first release was 20 years ago.  Here's a nice retrospective:

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/11/two-decades-of-productivity-vims-20th-anniversary.ars

Why do you love vim?

[funkymeeba]

In short for why I love it: Simplicity. It does so much for me without ever stepping on my toes.

[funkymeeba]

Something something conspiracy keys.

[sordna]

If it's so good why does the HHKB use different movement keys?
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The HHKB is not as good as you think.

[insilica]

The HHKB is not as good as you think.

Indeed - HB vim! I look forward to celebrating your 30'th (maybe with a topre)

that cluster will mind kurtafol u before u can actually use it properly!

[sordna]

Keyboards should *really* take a hint from vi for vertical movement keys (when placed side by side). Vi uses j for down k for up (left key for down, right key for up).
The Kinesis Advantage has arrows arranged as up/down (opposite from vi) so I always swap them to be down/up.
The KBC Poker also has PgUp/PgDown side by side in that order. It should be PgDown/PgUp instead.
Hey, vi's navigation keys came from a *keyboard* that had them arranged that way, why the Kinesis and the Poker reversed them I'd really like to know.

Can folks please list other keyboards you know of, that have vertical movement keys side by side? How did they order them in each case?

[hashbaz]

Would it be nice if it was all uniform?  Sure.  But I don't think it matters which is up and which is down, personally.  There's nothing intrinsically downish about left, or uppish about right.  I use vim every day, including on both a Kinesis and a Poker, and I got used to the opposite senses of up and down on each without much effort.

[sordna]

Would it be nice if it was all uniform?  Sure.  But I don't think it matters which is up and which is down, personally.  There's nothing intrinsically downish about left, or uppish about right.

Sure there is. Apart from vi's orientation, there's another mnemonic, related to the middle finger gesture. When you give someone the finger, it involves pointing the middle finger up. :-)  So when using the index and middle fingers for vertical movement, that's another reason for the middle finger to do the upward motion  :roll:
It all falls into place when keyboards take hints from the natural world :-)

[hashbaz]

Sure there is. Apart from vi's orientation, there's another mnemonic, related to the middle finger gesture. When you give someone the finger, it involves pointing the middle finger up. :-)  So when using the index and middle fingers for vertical movement, that's another reason for the middle finger to do the upward motion  :roll:
It all falls into place when keyboards take hints from the natural world :-)

Heh, good point.

[TacticalCoder]

Keyboards should *really* take a hint from vi for vertical movement keys (when placed side by side). Vi uses j for down k for up

But... where's the logic in "left key for down" / "right key for up" versus "upper key for up" / "lower key for down" ?

If j/k for down/up is so great, why aren't people playing First-Person Shooters (like Counter-Strike) using their keyboard configured like vim to move left/right/up/down?

To me having what happens to the cursor not mimick what happens to the keyboard just adds one illogical step.

Or is it because when people need to go "3 lines up" they like to go "4 lines up then one down" and that is then faster using j/k because you can use two different fingers?  But then why not simply go "3 lines up"?

I mean: I push my mouse up, the mouse cursor goes up, etc.  For the text cursor, why should I suddenly go left/right to do up/down.  Can't possibly make that much more sense than WASD / t-inverted-shape.

I really fail to see what 'j' / 'k' has that is so magical that keyboard designers should start mimicking (besides having vi/vim users who did not reconfigure their vi/vim being used to it).

[sordna]

We never said left/right keys for vertical movement is better than up/down keys.
All I'm saying is, in those keyboards that happen to have vertical movement keys side by side (for whatever reason, such as the Kinesis for the arrows and the Poker for PgUp/PgDown) the left key should do the down movement and right key should do the up movement to be consistent with vi and the ADM-3A keyboard vi originally got this ordering from:

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[TacticalCoder]

We never said left/right keys for vertical movement is better than up/down keys.
All I'm saying is, in those keyboards that happen to have vertical movement keys side by side (for whatever reason, such as the Kinesis for the arrows and the Poker for PgUp/PgDown) the left key should do the down movement and right key should do the up movement to be consistent with vi

oooh ok I see, sorry I misunderstood you : )

Nice vintage computer/keyboard that one you posted btw, reminds me a bit of an old Texas Instrument I was playing with in the eighties (though that one looks even older)

[kps]

The Kinesis Advantage has arrows arranged as up/down (opposite from vi) so I always swap them to be down/up.

After 13 years of Kinesis and twice of vi... I never really noticed. I wonder how long it would take to re-learn.

But... where's the logic in "left key for down" / "right key for up"

The logic is that Control-J is Line Feed, just as Control-H is Backspace. After that… well, gotta pick something.

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