Evening,
I got a Lenovo T400 laptop, and the F1 is in a stupid place, and keep hitting it instead of hitting Esc to get change modes with VIM.
I did some googling, and tried adding
map <F1> <Esc>
imap <F1> <Esc>
to my ~/.vimrc file, but to no avail...
If I can't do this with a vimrc, is there a way to change it at the linux/system level?
Using Linux Mint 14 MATE
--
Answer:
The terminal application has it's on keyboard shortcuts defined. Under Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts you can disable the help. Then the map/imap above will work fine.
You can also edit the keyboard settings in the main system keyboard preferences. Open that up and go to Layouts -> Options and play with the Caps Lock key behaviour. You can disable it, or even bind it to ESC.
It may be that your keyboard isn't producing the keycode that Vim translates to <F1>. In Vim, go into insert mode, and type Ctrl-v. Then press F1. The string that you just inserted is the string that needs to go on the left-hand side of your map command. It might be <x-F1> or something similar. You can do this to insert the key name directly in your .vimrc file.
Remember to restart Vim after editing your .vimrc file.
Regardless of whether you get this working, you might like to swap your Esc and Caps Lock keys, which is quite a popular thing to do among Vim users. You can't do that within Vim, you need to edit your X configuration to achieve it. The Vim tips wiki tells you how.
Related
I just installed gvim 8.1 on my Win10-machine and wanted to modify _vimrc, and to learn to use vim.
I can switch modes with a,i, <C-o> to enter insert-mode, and <C-c> or <Esc> to get back to normal mode, but only when I opend a file with gvim.
If I only start gvim, it displays an empty unnamed file in insert mode, and no combination of keys lets me leave the insert mode.
I tried:
Ctrl+c
Esc
^c
^C
activating/deactivating Capslock
Ctrl+[ (German QWERTZ-keyboard, [ is on AltGr+8)
I also deleted msvim.vim, because I thought that might help, but it had absolutely no effect.
Any other ideas how to leave insert mode here? Everything is fine if I open a text-file directly...
Try typing <C-o>:verbose set insertmode?<CR>. If it replies with insertmode, you're in easy mode (:help easy). For that session, you can turn this off via <C-o>:set noinsertmode<CR>.
If you're lucky, the :verbose also tells you the file where (mistakenly) :set insertmode happened. But I rather suspect that the shortcut that starts Vim passes the -y command-line argument (but it's only effective if no files are passed). To fix that, you need to check the shortcut (don't use one that says Vim (Easy mode) in it, or launches evim.bat) or your file associations in the Windows registry.
I'm running Vim on a gnome terminal. But the alt key mappings are not working. For example:
:imap <A-i> <Esc>
It works fine in GVim. But when I run the same command with Vim in the gnome terminal it does nothing.
I'm using Windows 7, The problem is with the terminal, right?
The problem
There are two ways for a terminal emulator to send an Alt key (usually called a Meta key as actual terminals didn't have Alt). It can either send 8 bit characters and set the high bit when Alt is used, or it can use escape sequences, sending Alt-a as <Esc>a. Vim expects to see the 8 bit encoding rather than the escape sequence.
Some terminal emulators such as xterm can be set to use either mode, but Gnome terminal doesn't offer any such setting. To be honest in these days of Unicode editing, the 8-bit encoding is not such a good idea anyway. But escape sequences are not problem free either; they offer no way of distinguishing between <Esc>j meaning Alt-j vs pressing Esc followed by j.
In earlier terminal use, typing Escj was another way to send a Meta on a keyboard without a Meta key, but this doesn't fit well with vi's use of Esc to leave insert mode.
The solution
It is possible to work around this by configuring vim to map the escape sequences to their Alt combinations.
Add this to your .vimrc:
let c='a'
while c <= 'z'
exec "set <A-".c.">=\e".c
exec "imap \e".c." <A-".c.">"
let c = nr2char(1+char2nr(c))
endw
set timeout ttimeoutlen=50
Alt-letter will now be recognised by vi in a terminal as well as by gvim. The timeout settings are used to work around the ambiguity with escape sequences. Esc and j sent within 50ms will be mapped to <A-j>, greater than 50ms will count as separate keys. That should be enough time to distinguish between Meta encoding and hitting two keys.
If you don't like having timout set, which times out for other mapped key sequences (after a second by default), then you can use ttimeout instead. ttimeout applies only to key codes and not other mappings.
set ttimeout ttimeoutlen=50
For Gnome-terminal, use the following instead:
imap ^[i <Esc>
^[i should be typed by pressing Ctrl-v Alt-i
Attention: You need to yank and put in Vim when you want to copy it elsewhere. If you just copy the mapping in an editor like gedit, the mapping will probably be broken.
EDIT here is an example which makes Alt-k add an empty line above the cursor, and Alt-j add an empty line after the current line.
" Alt-j/k to add a blank line
if has('gui_running')
" the following two lines do not work in vim, but work in Gvim
nnoremap <silent><A-j> :set paste<CR>m`o<Esc>``:set nopaste<CR>
nnoremap <silent><A-k> :set paste<CR>m`O<Esc>``:set nopaste<CR>
else
" these two work in vim
" shrtcut with alt key: press Ctrl-v then Alt-k
" ATTENTION: the following two lines should not be
" edited under other editors like gedit. ^[k and ^[j will be broken!
nnoremap ^[k :set paste<CR>m`O<Esc>``:set nopaste<CR>
nnoremap ^[j :set paste<CR>m`o<Esc>``:set nopaste<CR>
endif
Try
<m-i>
Or, if typing alti inserts a character (like in my case, it inserts a carret: ˆ) just map to that character:
:inoremap ˆ <esc>
Be careful, because this one wouldn't work (at least in my system, MacOS 10.6). The caret waits for a letter, because it's not exactly a caret, it is a circumflex.
It may be that the shortcuts are actually from the Gnome Desktop. Try looking at the Gnome Keyboard Shortcuts tool (System menu, Preferences, Keyboard Shortcuts), which lets you view and modify the shortcuts defined on Gnome Desktop. If the key combination is assigned to a function on Gnome Desktop, then remove it and then that key combo should filter down to Vim properly.
Or you may be right that it is a problem of the terminal. Not all terminals support all key combos. Your problem may be the one described in the Vim help docs at :h map-alt-keys. The docs provide a workaround, but not a very good one.
The same thing happens to me. I searched on Google with "gnome terminal alt key", and found that someone asked almost the same question: "How to disable the alt-hotkey behavior on gnome terminal?" in the first link found. (The second link is just this question)
So, maybe you can try that:
Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts, and uncheck "Enable menu access keys"
Take a look at section 1.10 of http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/map.html. It seems to indicate that gnome-terminal automatically escapes the Alt modifier, so that it doesn't switch the byte sent in the way that Vim is expecting. The document seems to indicate that there isn't really a way around this except for using a different terminal (such as xterm).
This is certainly frustrating because so far as I can tell Linux machines are also incapable of using the D (Mac's Command or Linux's Super) bindings, so at least as far as the terminal goes, we are limited to Shift and Ctrl modifiers, which is frustrating if we want to ensure that we can use all the commands we use in Gvim on terminal Vim (at least without switching terminals, towards which I'm perhaps overly stubborn - gnome-terminal is just so much prettier). I've been looking for a way around this but have been unable to find anything.
I'm running Vim on a gnome terminal. But the alt key mappings are not working. For example:
:imap <A-i> <Esc>
It works fine in GVim. But when I run the same command with Vim in the gnome terminal it does nothing.
I'm using Windows 7, The problem is with the terminal, right?
The problem
There are two ways for a terminal emulator to send an Alt key (usually called a Meta key as actual terminals didn't have Alt). It can either send 8 bit characters and set the high bit when Alt is used, or it can use escape sequences, sending Alt-a as <Esc>a. Vim expects to see the 8 bit encoding rather than the escape sequence.
Some terminal emulators such as xterm can be set to use either mode, but Gnome terminal doesn't offer any such setting. To be honest in these days of Unicode editing, the 8-bit encoding is not such a good idea anyway. But escape sequences are not problem free either; they offer no way of distinguishing between <Esc>j meaning Alt-j vs pressing Esc followed by j.
In earlier terminal use, typing Escj was another way to send a Meta on a keyboard without a Meta key, but this doesn't fit well with vi's use of Esc to leave insert mode.
The solution
It is possible to work around this by configuring vim to map the escape sequences to their Alt combinations.
Add this to your .vimrc:
let c='a'
while c <= 'z'
exec "set <A-".c.">=\e".c
exec "imap \e".c." <A-".c.">"
let c = nr2char(1+char2nr(c))
endw
set timeout ttimeoutlen=50
Alt-letter will now be recognised by vi in a terminal as well as by gvim. The timeout settings are used to work around the ambiguity with escape sequences. Esc and j sent within 50ms will be mapped to <A-j>, greater than 50ms will count as separate keys. That should be enough time to distinguish between Meta encoding and hitting two keys.
If you don't like having timout set, which times out for other mapped key sequences (after a second by default), then you can use ttimeout instead. ttimeout applies only to key codes and not other mappings.
set ttimeout ttimeoutlen=50
For Gnome-terminal, use the following instead:
imap ^[i <Esc>
^[i should be typed by pressing Ctrl-v Alt-i
Attention: You need to yank and put in Vim when you want to copy it elsewhere. If you just copy the mapping in an editor like gedit, the mapping will probably be broken.
EDIT here is an example which makes Alt-k add an empty line above the cursor, and Alt-j add an empty line after the current line.
" Alt-j/k to add a blank line
if has('gui_running')
" the following two lines do not work in vim, but work in Gvim
nnoremap <silent><A-j> :set paste<CR>m`o<Esc>``:set nopaste<CR>
nnoremap <silent><A-k> :set paste<CR>m`O<Esc>``:set nopaste<CR>
else
" these two work in vim
" shrtcut with alt key: press Ctrl-v then Alt-k
" ATTENTION: the following two lines should not be
" edited under other editors like gedit. ^[k and ^[j will be broken!
nnoremap ^[k :set paste<CR>m`O<Esc>``:set nopaste<CR>
nnoremap ^[j :set paste<CR>m`o<Esc>``:set nopaste<CR>
endif
Try
<m-i>
Or, if typing alti inserts a character (like in my case, it inserts a carret: ˆ) just map to that character:
:inoremap ˆ <esc>
Be careful, because this one wouldn't work (at least in my system, MacOS 10.6). The caret waits for a letter, because it's not exactly a caret, it is a circumflex.
It may be that the shortcuts are actually from the Gnome Desktop. Try looking at the Gnome Keyboard Shortcuts tool (System menu, Preferences, Keyboard Shortcuts), which lets you view and modify the shortcuts defined on Gnome Desktop. If the key combination is assigned to a function on Gnome Desktop, then remove it and then that key combo should filter down to Vim properly.
Or you may be right that it is a problem of the terminal. Not all terminals support all key combos. Your problem may be the one described in the Vim help docs at :h map-alt-keys. The docs provide a workaround, but not a very good one.
The same thing happens to me. I searched on Google with "gnome terminal alt key", and found that someone asked almost the same question: "How to disable the alt-hotkey behavior on gnome terminal?" in the first link found. (The second link is just this question)
So, maybe you can try that:
Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts, and uncheck "Enable menu access keys"
Take a look at section 1.10 of http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/map.html. It seems to indicate that gnome-terminal automatically escapes the Alt modifier, so that it doesn't switch the byte sent in the way that Vim is expecting. The document seems to indicate that there isn't really a way around this except for using a different terminal (such as xterm).
This is certainly frustrating because so far as I can tell Linux machines are also incapable of using the D (Mac's Command or Linux's Super) bindings, so at least as far as the terminal goes, we are limited to Shift and Ctrl modifiers, which is frustrating if we want to ensure that we can use all the commands we use in Gvim on terminal Vim (at least without switching terminals, towards which I'm perhaps overly stubborn - gnome-terminal is just so much prettier). I've been looking for a way around this but have been unable to find anything.
I've done some searching and found a wealth of information on binding keys in vim, but I can't find out, for sure, how to map shift-tab. Or what command I need to map it to for it to "tab backwards".
This is what I have at the moment:
map <S-tab> <S-,><S-,>
Possibly Relevant Information:
I'm running Debian with Terminal 2.22.3. with VIM - Vi IMproved 7.1
Vim already has built-in key commands for insert mode to shift the current line left or right one &shiftwidth. They are (in insert mode):
Ctrl-t : shift right (mnemonic "tab")
Ctrl-d : shift left (mnemonic "de-tab")
If you still want to use shift-tab, this is how you do it:
" for command mode
nnoremap <S-Tab> <<
" for insert mode
inoremap <S-Tab> <C-d>
Debugging why shift-tab in vim isn't performing an inverse tab in Vim
If you placed the code inoremap <S-Tab> <C-d> into your .vimrc and vim still isn't responding in insert mode, then that means your Shift-tab is being intercepted, gobbled, and ignored somewhere in the perilous 4-part journey between your keyboard and vim. You need to figure out where your Shift-Tab is getting silently orphaned.
Four stage journey of Shift+Tab between keyboard and vim
Keyboard -> Operating System
The first step of a keystroke's journey is the operating system that intercepts all keys and stops some of them to perform a behaviors for the Operating system. For example Alt+Tab which often means "change focus of current window to the next". If you send Alt+Tab into vim, vim will not respond because the operating system gobbled it. You have to find this keymapping area on your operating system. Windows, Mac and Linux are all different, and they have different programs that manage which keys are intercepted and which pass through to applications. Find this area and make sure your Shift+tab is set to pass-though to the Terminal you use.
Operating System -> Terminal Application
Step 2 assumes the OS allowed your Shift+Tab to pass through to your terminal Application that has focus. Your terminal application should have a configuration menu option (Most have more than one, that fight each other) under Settings -> shortcuts, or settings -> keymaps. There are hundreds of terminal apps out there and each have different ideologies for which keystrokes to trap and gobble and perform some action native to the app, or which to pass through to the shell. Find this area and make sure your Shift+tab is allowed to pass through and is passing through.
Terminal Application -> your Shell
Step 3 assumes your Terminal application allowed Shift+Tab to pass through to the shell. There is an area that defines which key combos are intercepted to perform an action on the shell, which pass through to the application that is on the front. For me this is inputrc but mac and Windows have different areas. You'll have to find this file and clear out anything that may be gobbling your Shift+Tab and erase that, or add a rule that says pass through.
Shell -> vim
Now we're at the level of Vim where the .vimrc can hear, trap and or rebroadcast the Shift+Tab to the next step in the command chain, and do whatever you want while it does so. Vim has the map keyword that controls this.
There's even a 5th step in the journey if we're talking about Browsers or webpages, who have interpreter engines that allow client side code to remap keys. But that's for a different post.
Debug chain instructions to isolate where your Shift+Tab is orphaned:
Make sure your OS isn't gobbling your Shift+tab and performing no-action. Try a different application like Eclipse, Browser or Notepad, and see if Shift+Tab performs any action. If it does then The OS is likely passing through your Shift+tab unaffected to applications.
Make sure your terminal app can receive and is receiving the Shift+Tab. Verify this by going to settings -> Shortcuts and erase any keymap that has Shift, or Tab in the name, then make a new keymapping that intercepts Shift+tab and performs some simple action like new tab doesn't matter. Save it, put focus in the terminal and press it, if a new tab appears then Terminal can hear and respond.
Make sure your terminal is passing through Shift+Tab to shell. Erase anything smelling of Tab or Shift in Settings -> keymaps and Settings -> Shortcuts. The default action (should be) do nothing and pass through.
Open any other shell program like nano, ed, or emacs. If any of these perform any action when you press Shift+Tab, then it's likely that the terminal is passing through Shift+tab to vim.
At this point we know vi/vim is receiving Shift+Tab, but not responding to it. To isolate the problem, blow away all your vim config files like .vimrc, .profile and anything under .vim. The problem could even be with vim or under /etc You run vanilla vim using vim -u NONE and make sure you're running vim. Vim's default behavior is straight pass through. So if Shift+Tab isn't doing something, then vi is bugged.
Uninstall vim with a blank config files/directories and re-install. If this doesn't work, then your operating system is bugged. Reinstall the operating system. If this doesn't work, throw the computer in the trash.
To test if vim actually gets your shift+tab go into insert mode
ctrl+v then tab and it should create a tab character
ctrl+v then shift+tab and it should create an inverse tab character (which appears as ^[[Z)
If it does not, then vim is not receiving the shift+tab input
In my case it was my terminal.
In the terminal window -> settings -> shortcuts
search shift+tab and unmap
OP's question specifies map, which applies to normal, visual, select, and operator-pending modes (see :h mapmode-nvo). I'm not sure such a mapping makes any sense in operator-pending mode, but it's very useful in visual and select modes. I'll also add forward indentation for completeness:
" both visual and select modes at once. gv means reselect the last selection
vnoremap <Tab> >gv
vnoremap <S-Tab> <gv
" just visual mode. this is unsurprisingly the same as vnoremap
xnoremap <Tab> >gv
xnoremap <S-Tab> <gv
" just select mode. <C-o> leaves select mode for visual mode, where the
" command is performed, and <C-g> reenters select mode from visual mode
snoremap <Tab> <C-o>>gv<C-g>
snoremap <S-Tab> <C-o><gv<C-g>
Please do note that Tab and CTRL-i map to each other in most terminal emulators, so mapping Tab can have unexpected results. See this question for more.
The following can be used with Vim tabs:
map <TAB> <ESC>gt<CR>
map <S-TAB> <ESC>gT<CR>
I would like to have a mapping to quickly quit all buffers, for use when I'm vimdiffing a lot of files. Control and a function key together proved a good safety, so that I don't accidentally hit this combination, unintentionally leaving Vim. I tried the following mapping:
map <C-F10> :qa<CR>
To no avail. If I ditch the control, I can quit with F10 alone—why doesn't control work with F10 in my mapping?
I suspect you are using vim and not gvim. vim keybindings are limited by the terminal we are running vim within.
I've given up on vim, and I systematically use gvim for that reason.
Luc is right - I just tried that in gvim (well, MacVim) and it worked fine. Then I tried it in the terminal with no joy.