[TheLocehiliosan]

I swear sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the world that thinks hitting the ESC key is easy and no big deal.

Maybe it’s decades of doing it, and I don’t consider myself especially dexterous, but I never have any problem with it.

[gwn7]

Agreed. Most vim users swap esc with caps lock anyway, making it even easier to reach.

I don't think pedals bring any significant ergonomic benefit, but pedal setups look cool nonetheless.

Swapping keys isn't interesting and you can't write a blog post about it.

[Beltalowda]

> Most vim users swap esc with caps lock anyway

"Some", sure, but "most"? Not so sure about that.

Besides, everyone knows what Ctrl is the One True Key™ in place of the Caps Lock and that only degenerate infidels map it to anything else.

[gwn7]

> Besides, everyone knows what Ctrl is the One True Key™ in place of the Caps Lock and that only degenerate infidels map it to anything else.

Haha yeah I've heard about that and I like the joke =) But I was never interested in adopting it. Because I configure my alt keys to act as ctrl keys which imo results in a much more ergonomic setup.

Ctrl is the most pressed control key for people like me who live in the terminal. But the default placement of the ctrl keys in modern layouts is so wrong. I have never understood it. I guess there has to be a historical reason but I've yet to find out. (Help me, greybeards)

I should't have to move my hand and strain my pinky to reach out the most pressed control keys. With alt it's so much easier. I don't have to move my hands nor use my pinkies. My thumbs already rest on the spacebar and I just have to make a little thumb movement.

Swapping ctrl with caps lock is an ok remedy but alt keys are in a much better place.

So ctrl goes where alt is by default.

But do I swap ctrl with alt? No!! Alt is a frequently used key as well so the default ctrl keys aren't a good fit for alt either. Instead I set the keys immediately adjacent to the default alt keys to act as alt. It's the Super key (sometimes referred as the "Windows" key) on the left side and the context menu key on the right.

Lastly, I set the default left ctrl key to act as Super and the right ctrl key to act as context. Because I virtually never use those.

(I think Apple got this mostly right. cmd is the most used control key for the average Apple user, and opt is next. Their placements are perfect. Though it's still problematic for developers as ctrl is again at the worst place possible. Because of that, what I do in Macs is swapping ctrl with cmd while leaving opt where they are.)

If I'm an infidel for doing this so be it. But with this setup, I'm extremely efficient one. I type and code and enter & exit from repls and jump between interfaces like a damn machine, impressing mostly everybody who watch me use my computer.

Ergonomics FTW

[polyamid23]

> Ctrl is the most pressed control key for people like me who live in the terminal. But the default placement of the ctrl keys in modern layouts is so wrong. I have never understood it. I guess there has to be a historical reason but I've yet to find out. (Help me, greybeards)

I've seen this talk here and the speaker mentioned the ADM-3A (that is also mentioned in the article itself) terminals at about the 17/18 minute mark. Mind the keyboard layout :)

https://jackrusher.com/strange-loop-2022/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A

[gwn7]

Thank you, I very much appreciate this. Will happily watch the talk which looks very interesting to me. Cheers!

[Beltalowda]

I actually don't really care, although trying the "regular" Ctrl on my laptop feels odd, but I'm also not used to using it.

It's just what I'm used to. I grew up on the MSX which, like many keyboards of its day, had Ctrl where we now have Caps Lock. When we upgraded (well, "upgraded") to Windows 95 I found some hack to make CapsLock behave like Ctrl because I was so used to it. Later I started using Linux and BSD and of course carried over the mapping with xmodmap. I've never really known anything else than Caps Lock being Ctrl.

Another oddity from my MSX days that took me years to get rid of was that a line would only be saved if you pressed "enter" at the end of it. That is, if you were editing some file, went up a line, edited it, and then just went down a line (without pressing enter) it wouldn't actually get saved. It took me quite a long time to get rid of the habit of "End + Enter" to make sure the line got saved (which wasn't needed on any other system I've used).

[gwn7]

Thank you, I appreciate your answers very much, very interesting to me!

[goosedragons]

For whatever reason IBM in their wisdom decided the AT keyboard should move Ctrl from next to A to where it is now. And I guess since that's when PC clones really started to pick up steam and decided to copy the most recent keyboard it got entrenched. And when Apple decided to bring the control key back to the Mac I guess it made some sense to copy what the PCs were doing and also not mess with previous Mac user's keyboard skills?

Japanese keyboards have extra keys near space. It's possible with software to remap those keys to something else like Ctrl. Really wish more keyboards had usable thumb keys...

[NikolaNovak]

I always wondered why people are finding it so hard to hit control. And then realized I've been using ThinkPad for 25years which has control closer. Maybe it's not as insane choice / change as I always thought!

[gwn7]

That makes sense but I think it's still ergonomically incomparable to having ctrl right next to my thumb. At least for me who use it so very frequently.

[darken]

Why not have the best of both worlds?

Both my Ubuntu and OSX machines are setup so that just pressing Caps Lock alone = escape, and holding Caps Lock = control.

For the curious, to do this in OSX I use Karabiner + a "complex modification" (i.e. import a small JSON config). And for Ubuntu I use a few 'xcape' commands that autorun on startup.

[kfajdsl]

Emacs pinky isn't really a problem if you don't use Emacs keybindings ;)

[galangalalgol]

My personal heresy is: ino jj <esc>

I like it because my fingers never leave the home row.

[cbm-vic-20]

That, and "inoremap jk <Esc>".

[hoosieree]

Better is "inoremap fd <Esc>" especially if you ever try to type Dijkstra or the alphabet.

Of course now you have to call your file descriptor something else. No free lunches.

[I_complete_me]

For some unremembered reason I changed from that to set <esc>=jk. No idea why but it also works.

[atrettel]

I tend to use escape in most circumstances, but I am increasingly partial to Ctrl-[ when using certain keyboards where the escape key is a bit too far for me. It's another option that's always available by default.

[kdtsh]

I have found Ctrl-[ to be the best option for a while. I swap Caps Lock and Ctrl since I am most used to Emacs/Readline-style keybindings, and even though I have moved over to Vim-style keybindings for all development I use Ctrl too much for other things to justify swapping Esc and Caps Lock. Ctrl-[ works 99% of the time, and the places it doesn’t work are usually mouse-driven anyway.

[cristoperb]

Ctrl-[ is so ingrained in my muscle memory that even when I finally mapped capslock to esc I still never use it.

[godelski]

I mean your fingers are already there and you're frequently hitting ctrl and hard brackets if you're programming. Just makes sense. <C-[> is the way to go. So many people customize vim in ways where native functionality is easier.

[the_third_wave]

You're not alone, it is one of the easiest keys to hit since it lies all by its own in a corner with no danger of hitting any other keys when whacking it with whatever finger - or combination thereof - is at hand. To be honest I had to guffaw a bit at the rationalisation for using a foot pedal:

The basic concept was to use a pedal to enable switching between normal and insert modes. In Vim’s predecessor, vi, switching modes was easy, with the ESC key located neatly by the Q on the keyboard of the ADM-3A terminal. On modern keyboards, though, it’s a pain, and so a foot pedal is a desirable solution.

So let me get this straight... it is easier to blindly grope for a foot pedal somewhere under a desk than it is to hit that very visible, very close-at-hand key on the keyboard with whatever appendage happens to be closest? Of course it isn't, this is just rationalisation for making that foot pedal - as if any reason is needed to indulge in such projects other than 'because I (want to find out if I) can'.

[pengaru]

For ages I lived with X40 and X60 form-factor ThinkPads, which have perfectly sized keyboards for my hands. The ESC key is easily accessed on these for me without leaving home row placement, palms comfortably planted.

Every ThinkPad I've had since then has been a regression in this department, beginning with the X201s and now I'm on an X230 and my typing is awful compared to the 4:3 X-series glory days. Reaching for the ESC key is noticably annoying compared to what I know so well to be the ideal. Why Lenovo kept stretching the keyboard to accommodate their widescreen transition instead of relocating better speakers to the keyboard flanks is beyond me.

But having suffered through this mess I fully understand why vi(m) users remap ESC to CAPS or pursue other mitigations. ESC key access is highly sensitive to keyboard-size:hand-size, and I suspect for many it's just inconveniently distant like my X230 is for me.

[chrismorgan]

Yeah, I just slap in that general direction and it works fine. That’s the beauty of that corner location, still fairly close and very forgiving.

(And I don’t want to use Caps Lock for that, Backspace on the other corner of the keyboard is far less convenient, that’s what I want Caps Lock to be.)

[junon]

I've literally never thought of using it for that. I don't think I'll switch but wish I also had the idea several years ago. Smart!

[LAC-Tech]

I think a lot of keyboard ergonomics comes down to the facts that some people do anything to avoid moving their hands, and others don't.

If you don't move your hand, you'll have to stretch your fingers, and might be better suited to a minimalist keyboard with function layers.

[asicsp]

I have long fingers and like using Esc and Functions keys (custom mapped).

[roblh]

It’s not so much the hitting escape, but the reorienting yourself on the keyboard after you hit it. Same with the numpad on the right, I’m desperately trying to stop using it, but it’s a tough change.

[agrippanux]

It wasn’t that easy on the ill fated Touch Bar, which prompted my move to Caps.