alt Hacker NewsMy main gripe with modal editors is that they still use the Escape key to go back to normal mode even though Escape was chosen for historical reasons (used to sit much much closer to the home row on older Unix Keyboards) In Linux and MacOs I can change it with just one gui setting but it's still annoying how everyone went with it. It's not mentionned in most vim tutorials. According to a vim reddit poll, at least half of the users are just using Escape where it is now instead of one of the alternatives. This is beyond me, it feels like someone inventing glasses in order to see better but everyone settled on cast iron frames.
Replies
I map caps to ctrl and do ctrl-[ to get to normal mode. The main reason is using Vim bindings in other editors where Esc can get intercepted by other bindings but ctrl-[ has always worked everywhere.
I have caps remapped to esc when tapped, and ctrl when held. Takes perhaps a weekend to get used to, but once the muscle memory is there it feels incredibly comfortable and natural.
I mean... if people don't mind reaching, so what? I purposefully don't remap my leader key, although I don't have many leader mappings so it's not like I'm reaching for it constantly.
Cassepipe, it’s not a great default for sure. What do you have yours mapped to? I mapped jj to return to normal mode and also save my file. So, as I’m typing, I just hit jj, the jj vanishes, and this command is run:
<Esc>:w<CR>
I could just have it escape instead without saving.
If I hadn’t chose jj it would have been ff, which is also always under an index finger. I do wish I’d been clued into the idea when I started with Vim instead of two years later.