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Comment by wcrossbow | Hacker News Reader

One of the first things most people configure with Vim is a more convenient way to escape (ctrl+[ not withstanding) into normal mode. I don't know enough about Emacs culture, but given how prevalent Ctrl/Meta are I would expect something similar to the point that those not doing it are the exception.

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Vim has several nice escape keys, including the ability to customize your own. Some of the ones I've seen people use are:

Ctrl + ]/[ (I forget which...I've never used this one)

Caps Lock.

My preference is to globally configure my Caps Lock key in whatever OS I am to "ESC on tap; Ctrl on Hold". This works amazing for VIM and is fantastic for non VIM usage as well.

Note: I don't use the mac regularly enough since I discovered this so I'm not sure if it's possible on the Mac (historically Karabiner has achieved whatever I've needed, so I suspect it would be able to do this as well) or if I should set it to CMD instead of Ctrl (On Mac, CMD, or the Apple Key, or whatever Apple is calling it these days, is far more analogous to Ctrl on other platforms).

How is it fantastic to use a combo of the worst finger with the second worst motion (sideways pinky for caps) for such a frequent action add mode switching?

Ctrl+] is similarly bad

jj doesn't work for multilingual layouts (chance that this sequence is used in typing in that language)

(yes, Karabiner can achieve what you've described)

I guess it depends on your dexterity, hand placement on the home row and the keyboard you’re using, but my left pinky falls onto caps naturally and I pull it in towards my other fingers for typing letters.

All of those are options. You don’t need to use all of them. Ctrl+] may be bad but people use it (I don’t like it which is why I’ve never used it, but there may be layouts in which it works well).

But im honestly struggling to see how pinky on the left cap is a bad option. And even if its a bad option, its a lot better than either CTRL keys, rhe ESC key, or the cursor keys which would be necessary to use without modal editing.

I still keep caps lock bound to control even though I don’t use emacs much anymore

Yeah I'm a little surprised not to see the article touch on keyboard layouts (e.g. DEC, Sun) that had Ctrl in the home row where Caps Lock is on a PC keyboard. While Emacs may have been initially developed on the "space cadet" keyboard, it really became popular on Unix systems that often had an even-easier-to-reach Ctrl key. And to this day swapping caps lock with a modifier remains fairly common.

I've never used emacs and this has been my default for over a decade.

Switching Esc and Caps lock is one of the first things I do on a new machine. Without it Vim and every place I have vim bindings (evil emacs) would be way too painful to use.

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