Hacker News Reader

Comment by nwest | Hacker News Reader

"Unfortunately, without an escape key it’s not possible to leave insert mode. That’s why by default the backslash key (‘\’) is mapped to the ‘Esc’ key. You’re free to overwrite this setting by unmapping the backslash key."

from http://applidium.com/en/applications/vim/support/

View on HN

You'd think this would be a great use for a custom gesture. Actually, having various gestures available as mappable objects would be pretty cool...

Definitely :-) Just add this as a feature request on GitHub. I was considering adding this, but I wasn't sure if other people would like it.

That's great for browsing but I can't picture coding in an editor where I need to stop and look for common command keys. At the moment vim is efficient because [esc]10dd or something but it's just not viable without a keyboard. For reviewing code or making quick edits however this could be incredible.

I wonder if it supports plugins.

    nnoremap jk <esc>

It's hard to believe there are people who regularly use vim and still use escape.

Why? It's quite convenient for my left-hand pinky on nearly every keyboard that I use, and I've picked up the habit of doing periodic `jk` movements as I'm examining some code. I tried the `jk` combination that some people recommend, but it doesn't work for me.

I've never used a keyboard where escape was convenient to press. I personally use inoremap so 'jk' only does something in insert mode, I hit jk repeatedly all the time in normal mode while I'm thinking.

Remapping caps lock to function as escape is pretty useful here.

I actually prefer kj myself, as it's a little faster to go from outside to inside fingers.

Shouldn't that be inoremap?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com