Hacker News Reader

Comment by buzzerbetrayed | Hacker News Reader

> I have an iPad Pro that’s useless for software development without SSHing into a machine.

And even that is a horrible experience because the iPad keyboard doesn’t allow key repeat, making vim a terrible experience. That used to be an issue anyway. Maybe they’ve fixed it.

View on HN

And no escape key! How do you get out of VIM insert mode? Control-[? Might as well use Emacs. At least there's an Option key for Meta.

You can rebind some keys on the iPad allowing for the relatively common “rebind Caps Lock to Escape”. That’s how I have mine set up.

What do you mean ‘no escape key’?

All the terminals I have used swap out the suggestions bar for a row of extra keys, with escape in the place you would expect it.

I'm referring to the physical Smart/Magic Keyboard for the iPad from Apple, not the onscreen keyboard:

https://www.apple.com/shop/ipad/ipad-accessories/keyboards

I just learned you can type command-. to send an escape on an iPad keyboard. And also as freehunter mentioned, iPad Settings / General / Keyboard / Hardware Keyboard / Modifier Keys lets you remap caps lock to escape.

https://9to5mac.com/2020/04/23/ipad-pro-magic-keyboard-escap...

> And even that is a horrible experience because the iPad keyboard doesn’t allow key repeat, making vim a terrible experience. That used to be an issue anyway. Maybe they’ve fixed it.

Isn't Vim the editor with the least reliance upon key repeat? Hardcore Vimmers would argue if you are using key repeat, you're doing it wrong.

What do you use key repeat for in Vim?

iOS allows key repeat from external keyboards, but not from the onscreen keyboard. In theory a third-party keyboard should be able to implement that, although I can’t say I’ve seen any examples of it.

Interesting. I have the Apple Smart Keyboard Folio (not the newest magic keyboard) and I've looked everywhere for a way to enable key repeat, to no avail. Am I wrong in thinking that traditionally key repeat is handled at the OS level, rather than the keyboard level? It seems weird to me that each individual keyboard would be in charge of implementing that, especially when the settings for it are part of a desktop OS.

There is a setting within iOS settings > Accessibility > Keyboards > Key Repeat

I’ve never actually used an external keyboard on iOS so I can’t vouch for how well it works, but judging from the settings pane it should do what you want

Reply on news.ycombinator.com