I was told to get the ¦ pipe symbol you press and hold the right alt key then the key next to the 1 on the top row of keys.
But this doesn't work for me, yet the keyboard clearly mentions this symbol.
another website said it's the same as | but as you can see it's clearly not.
Can anyone explain why I can't get this symbol?
Try to hold SHIFT + the key with | (on my QWERTY keyboard, | on the key looks like ¦).
Related
When I map 2 keys together for example <Tab><Space> and press the first one Vim will first wait to see if i press Space before printing the tabulation.
I would like to know if it is possible to make vim print the tabulation first and then waiting for an eventual Space key for mapping.
Thank You !
I want to know how I can write those two lines || in Eclipse and/or in Android studio. I never figured out how to do this i always copied them out of the internet- -> very uncomfortable.
That depends on your keyboard. On mine it is on the key on the lower left next to the left shift.
However if you don't find it, hold the Alt key and type 124 on the numerical keypad. At least under Windows that returns |.
It seems like this article by Steve Losh has been making the rounds, and in short, it led me to remap Caps Lock to F19, and at the system level, to remap F19 to Shift-Command-Ctrl-Alt, thus giving me an entire namespace for my own keyboard shortcuts.
The problem is I enjoyed using Caps Lock as my escape key in Vim.
I tried :map <M-C-D-S> <esc>, but upon sourcing, hitting caps lock doesn't do anything. I'm guessing it's because Vim expects an actual key to be pressed with the modifiers.
My question is: is it possible to have Vim read Shift-Cmd-Ctrl-Alt as Escape?
No, you can't map four modifiers. Not even three, Not even two. And, well… not even one.
"Modifiers" are called "modifiers" for a reason: they are used with normal keys to "modify" their meaning. The Shift, Alt, Cmd and Ctrl keys don't do anything on their own and Vim rightfully does nothing but wait for further keypresses when you hit them.
Additionnaly, Vim's input mechanism is a bit "old school", most probably to keep it consistent over the multiple platforms it may run on. It won't register more than one modifier with a normal key. That means that, if the terminal doesn't eat them up (which it does), you can only do <C-…> or <S-…>. The Alt key is not really a working solution because of how many terminal emulators deal with it and the Cmd key is Mac-only and only works in MacVim anyway.
At that point, if you are ready to mash four keys together to emulate the function of only one key (which in itself is rather silly), you might as well simply use <C-c> which, AFAIK, works everywhere. Your left hand will thank you.
My original question suffers as an XY Problem.
You want to do X, and you think Y is the best way of doing so. Instead of asking about X, you ask about Y.
I wanted to Vim to read Caps Lock as Esc (while still maintaining the other crazy system-level modifications), so I asked about functionality that Vim doesn't have.
Turns out, while the answers provided above were great, on point, and informative, I just don't like being told 'no.' And I was searching for answers in the wrong problem space.
One of the applications discussed in the OP's link, KeyRemap4MacBook, is highly extensible. The documentation leaves much to be desired, but I was able to piece together a solution in line with my original question. This diverges sharply from the original topic of "map stuff in vim," and for that I apologize, but I hope to leave this in posterity for the one poor soul that needs this.
Simply put, the previous article recommends adding this to KR4MB's 'private.xml' file:
<item>
<name>Remap Caps Lock to Hyper</name>
<appendix>OS X doesn't have a Hyper. This maps Left Control to Control + Shift + Option + Command.</appendix>
<identifier>caps_lock_to_hyper</identifier>
<autogen>
--KeyToKey--
KeyCode::F19,
KeyCode::COMMAND_L,
ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L
</autogen>
</item>
(modified slightly for Caps Lock)
This can instead be changed to:
<item>
<name>Caps Lock to Hyper OR Escape</name>
<appendix>Caps Lock should be remapped to F19 (80) in PCKBH</appendix>
<appendix>This remaps F19 to "Hyper" aka Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-Alt...</appendix>
<appendix>...but, when pressed alone, F19 sends only escape</appendix>
<identifier>remap.hyper2hyper_escape</identifier>
<autogen>
--KeyOverlaidModifier--
KeyCode::F19,
KeyCode::COMMAND_L,
ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L,
KeyCode::ESCAPE
</autogen>
</item>
This tells the system that whenever Caps Lock is pressed alone, it's actually Esc, but if it's pressed in conjunction with any other key, it's F19.
I'm just getting into using Vim. The way I learned to type I keep my fingers anchored over the "j,k,l,;" keys instead of the "h,j,k,l" keys. I'd like to change the key board short cuts to essentially move over the left,down,up,right functionality from the "h,j,k,l" keys to the "j,k,l,;" keys. Can anyone help me out?
The recent book Practical Vim by Drew Neil has an interesting discussion on this topic:
You’re wasting keystrokes if you press the h key more
than two times in a row. When it comes to moving horizontally, you can get
around quicker using word-wise or character search motions.
...
I’m pleased that the ; key rests comfortably beneath my little finger.
[Given that ; is the "find next" key for the f search command.]
I've been using Vim for many years and have never really thought about it. A friend of mine asked why that is, noting that in our culture, left would usually map to up while right would map to down, making the Vim keys backwards.
I understand that they are on the home row, meaning that you do not have to move your fingers anywhere to hit them, but that's a different point altogether.
Why were these keys given their present purposes? Is there some documentation on the decision as well?
The answer is in the Wikipedia entry for vi. Bill Joy, who wrote the visual mode of ex - which ended up being Vim's precursor vi - used a Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminal on which the HJKL keys mapped to left, down, up, right - and it’s been that way ever since.
Here's the keyboard layout:
A couple of other points of note on the ADM-3A layout:
Left of the Q: the escape key - somewhat handier than where it is on keyboards today, hence a good choice for switching between normal and insert modes.
Top right: the 'Home' key doubles as the tilde (~), which subsequently became shorthand for a Unix user's home directory.
vimtutor provides the mnemonic that 'J' looks vaguely like a downward-pointing arrow, though that may or may not be the original reason why it was chosen.
This is a total guess, but: The Ctrl+J character is the "line feed" character, which on a traditional TTY moves down one line, providing a mnemonic. K was right next to it on a Qwerty keyboard, under the second most commonly used finger on the right hand when in the home position.
Simply to supplement all the answers, here is the photo of the ADM-3A keyboard (the exact keyboard on which Vim has been created).
P.S: I wish they had used W, A, S, D
From a user experience perspective, after you open a file, you always move down first and moving down is usually a more frequent operation. Since from left to right is the natural direction for most of us, it make sense to associate the task you perform first or more frequently with the key on the left. You can try to switch the 2 keys and try to tell which way is better. For me, "J" for down is more natural and comfortable.
It explains it if you run vimtutor in the terminal. It says:
The h key is at the left and moves left.
The l key is at the right and moves right.
The j key looks like a down arrow.
I always thought it was because on the Dvorak layout, j and k are also next to each other. There are not many keys that have this property on both Dvorak and A/QWERTY/Z.