"The Vim Clutch": a footpedal for the code-editor Vim

looks like a sewing machine pedal, which is an analogue device, You should be able to use the pedal to replace dozens of keys.

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Vim certainly does use the arrow keys (hell, even vi on HP-sUX uses the arrow keys). The arrow keys let you move around without leaving insert mode.

Love the vim clutch & will build (because I have several spare pedals in the scrap heap).

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Blasphemer! For the faithful enter the Holy Words, yea even unto their .vimrc:

map <Up>     <Nop>
map <Down>   <Nop>
map <Left>   <Nop>
map <Right>  <Nop>
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Unsurprisingly I am in the tsk-tsk camp. The point of vim is keyboard muscle memory, having a pedal in place of the most vital key would break that so hard. What’s the point of training yourself so you’re unable to use vim anywhere but at home?

Besides, 99% of the time you can exit insert mode with Ctrl-C, which is pretty convenient, you only need ESC when recording macros with q.

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That looks a bit… baroque.

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I’ve been a long-time vim user (originally beginning with vi). There are a lot of features in vim that I haven’t used, but for basic text editing it’s far and away my favorite.

Oddly, though, for command-line history editing I prefer Emacs key bindings.

I have fantastic news for you.

On a more general note, I bought a couple of these after seeing them on dansdata to test how they might help users with disability. I didn’t find a good use for them at the time, but now this has reminded me I might dig them out and see if I can find a situation that requires more pedals.

I’m just reminded that, for lack of word processing software, I used to type school papers, stories, etc. in Multiplan on a DECmate II. We’d format the page for (I think) 8 columns, then enter text one line at a time, being mindful not to type past an approximate point that might exceed the eighth column’s width. Also, double-quotes weren’t allowed – instead I’d use two single-quotes.

Later on (1987) we got hold of a Commodore 64 (fairly old even by then), and I used that version of Multiplan to write my junior theme. We had a Brother daisywheel typewriter* and found some sort of interface cable at Toys R Us (of all places) that allowed the Brother to function as a printer.

*The Brother had its own set of challenges. The daisywheel mechanism would only strike at a certain speed, no matter how quickly one could type. I could hunt-and-peck a little faster than it would print, but for a good typist, several lines might have gone past before a mistake was spotted. When we hooked that thing up as a printer it just about went all night, at (I’d guess) 5 characters a second.

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You know Readline key bindings? Of course you do, they’re in your shell, your REPL, and perhaps even the GUI for your OS. They’re similar to Emacs key bindings (C-a for home), but with several concessions for UNIX (C-w for delete word).

With rsi.vim, I’ve taken that same concession philosophy and extended it to Vim. Get the most useful of the ubiquitous key bindings without blindly overriding built-in Vim functionality.

OR you could just type

inoremap jk <esc>
inoremap <esc> <nop>

in your .vimrc and then you don’t have to hit esc to go back to normal mode ever again. And you don’t need a stupid foot pedal either.

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This sounds like a great idea for all the professional writers still hooked on Wordstar.

http://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm

I’m surprised that’s not the name of a text editor.

I occasionally weep hot bitter tears when I think of the trackball on the old mac powerbooks from the 90s. I loved those! I could whack the trackball once and the inertia would carry it to precisely the pixel I intended, all the way across the screen. Physics ftw

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Luxury. We had to chew th’ ‘oles in th’ punchcards wit’ our teeth. In th’ dark.

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I was thinking the same thing. Full disclosure, I’m mostly an infrastructure jockey (sysadmin+networking), not a software developer, so maybe my priorities are slightly different.

I’m always amazed by the “battle station” mentality some of my peers use in setting up their workstations: Lots of monitors, goofy trackballs, bonkers ergo keyboards, etc…

Amazed, that is, until I watch one of them try to use their own damned laptop in a conference room or airplane: They’re totally lost and ineffective. Some can’t use the built-in pointing device on their own hardware.

I noticed a couple of decades ago that the point where I needed to be at my best was at 2AM, in the data center, banging away on a real VT100 at the prompt of a server that won’t boot or is in single user mode. None of my command aliases, special hardware, autofill goofiness, or even probably man pages would be available. Can I get the company back online under those circumstances?

I’ve honed my muscle memory over the years with that in mind, and I don’t look like an idiot on the occasions I have to sit at a customer’s desk to fix something. The main exception: I’ve set up a workstation similar to that used by the CCIE lab exam, so that I’d be fast and effective in that specific environment too.

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The best way to learn vim is through an 8-bit game. So much fun (even if you already know it)!

In over 30 years, I’ve only ever heard it pronounced vee-eye.

And then vim came around. It’s also pronounced vee-eye; the M is silent. Because vim is a pretty dumb name to give to a clone of vi.

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Vim’s an improvement over the original vi. Remember how vi would pop out of insert mode if you backspaced past the first character in the line? I used to curse Bill Joy every time that happened.

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Read that as “repetitive stress injury.” Still think it makes more sense that way.

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