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Comment by fergie | Hacker News Reader

I hadn't considered the removal of the esc key from a vi/emacs perspective. Is this something that can be lived with?

For vim either map a key sequence "jj" or "fd" to esc or remap caps lock to esc. Many vim users do that anyway for the convenience.

Not sure about emacs (I use spacemacs). Does esc come in for more than just cancelling commands? If you don't need to use your caps lock for ctrl for emacs, the same remap to esc would work as well.

Anyway, basically boils down to two things: 1) the touch bar escape is fine for occasional use but I wouldn't want to use it frequently and 2) that isn't a problem if you don't mind remapping caps lock and have nothing more important to do with it.

Emacs user here, I think I never use escape; I use C-g to cancel a command.

The idea behind evil mode in emacs is to not use the control or meta keys for most things, since they are awkwardly placed. Evil mode activates the Esc key just like in vim.

evil-escape module for evil mode adds the 'fd' functionality discussed here.

I've always used Ctrl-[ instead of escape. it sends the same character code but keeps my hands at the home row. great for when you're on a roll and don't want to break your flow.

Which is why 'fd' as a key combo is even more useful than Ctrl-[. The keys are right there on the home row buttons themselves!

but f is one of the best commands in vim (fX finds the next instance of X on that line only; F does the same but backwards; t/T forward/backward search and put the cursor to the left of the next instance of the following char on that line). X is a char not a regex; f. will find the next period.

if we use carat for cursor,

   this is a line of text
        ^

typing ft does

   this is a line of text
                     ^

whereas tt would

   this is a line of text
                    ^

But fd is for escaping insert mode. The commands you are talking about are not used in insert mode. That is the entire point of fd.

See my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13098257. I don't use vi or Emacs, but I still use the Escape key constantly.

tl;dr: If you, like me, touch-type and work very fast, then the absence of tactile feedback on the new Esc is unnerving. It's like a work-stopper. Even if something did happen when you hit it, the lack of feedback means your brain automatically thinks you didn't hit anything. I don't know if this is something one gets used to. After a week, it's still awful.

By just getting a real laptop, yes. I can't believe how often Apple gets away with taking away core functionality like headphone jacks and vga ports, but unfortunately as long as there's an Apple logo on it then people will buy it, for an absurd markup. I wonder if the Apple Car will have no parking brake because it's not used often enough.

Actually, the Apple Car is more aggressive: they got rid of the car itself!

(because they decided not to make one, actually)

It was a hypothetical.

Apparently they did actually consider making a car, which I didn't know.

Make sure you try out the 'fake' esc key. I was expecting this to be a problem, but in practice I didn't really notice the difference. Granted, this was just messing around in the store, but I was pleasantly surprised.

I use ctrl+C instead of Esc in vim all the time (quite useful on iPad keyboards as well) plus you can remap the Caps Lock key as stated in TFA.

Apparently using TAB or CAPS LOCK instead of ESC is a pretty popular alternative. I haven't tried it myself, but I have heard of it.

I have caps-a mapped to Esc but still find myself hitting escape just as often.

I remap Caps-Lock to a Ctrl/Esc combination: When it's pressed and released on its own, it sends an Esc; when it's used as a modifier key (pressed together with another key), it sends a Ctrl. I haven't touched the Esc key in years.

When you consider what the keyboard layout on the machine on which vi was made looked like: http://xahlee.info/kbd/i/vi/terminal_ADM-3A_keyboard.jpg , it's easy to understand why dual-use caps-lock makes the usage feel smoother and more natural than on regular PC keyboard layout.

For anyone that would like to do this, here are example instructions for both Linux and MacOS: http://www.economyofeffort.com/2014/08/11/beyond-ctrl-remap-...

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