Has anyone ever tried to use vim on a non qwerty layout? I’ve always been interested in colemak but having to possibly re-bind every single key for vim is daunting.

4 points

Don’t rebind. Using colemak. Just work with it as is and get used to it… It’s honestly not an issue. More of a getting used to thing.

permalink
report
reply
4 points

Yeah definitely no rebind. I use dvorak and what I realized was that you don’t memorize the locations of the keys in vi, you memorize the letters themselves. So once you know the layout, you don’t have to relearn vi. But if you remap your keys, you’ll have to do both.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

How long was the adjustment period? So far the only thing I’m using from colemak is forcing caps lock to be backspace, easily one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Can’t remember, honestly. But not unhappy currently.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

For me, it’s about knowing the mnemonic for the various vim commands and what the keys do, not where they are placed on the Qwerty layout. I’ve been touch-typing Dvorak for over 20 years and think about what I am trying to do in vim/vi (or evil-mode) rather than where on the keyboard I need to hit a key.

permalink
report
reply
1 point

Like others said, you can adapt to using most keybinds on colemak. I had a tough adapting to positional keybinds such as the home arrows. It just was in very weird places on colemak.

Eventually I started using Extend layer from BigBagTrix which provides many useful keys near home. It uses caps as a modifier but you could possibly add dual behavior for tap and hold to have backspace function if you want.

Now I am used to a mix of extend and vim bindings.

permalink
report
reply
1 point

I’ve been using vi/vim with Dvorak for over 30 years. Why would you have to re-bind keys?

permalink
report
reply

VIM - Vi IMproved

!vim@lemmy.sdf.org

Create post

For Vim enthusiasts and anyone interested in Vim/Neovim!

“VIM is the greatest editor since the stone chisel.” - Dr. Jose Unpingco

#HJKL

Community stats

  • 66

    Monthly active users

  • 32

    Posts

  • 153

    Comments