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by myfonj 365 days ago
For me personally is the J/K direction still feels swapped and I always have to remind myself they are in fact the other way round. Even (especially) for touch typists, I would really expect [k] to point down and [j] up. In our writing system from the top left to bottom right my intuition would really be to stick ↑ with ← together and vice versa ↓ with →.

    ← ↓ ↑ →
makes a little sense to me.

    ← ↑ ↓ →
would be way better, IMO.

Not only because the most used used direction (↓) would be closer to my "neutral" finger position, but mainly because the the keys for progressing "back" and keys for progressing "forwards would be grouped together.

Honestly, I wouldn't even mind having them spread across two rows, like U I J K

    ↑  ↓
    ←  →
or something. (Personally, I have global WASD-like arrow mapping bound to IJKL through capslock combo in AutoHotkey, since sometimes cursor keys are really inconveniently far away when typing.)
1 comments
lIl-IIIl 364 days ago
I think the current system is the way it is in order so that the most used direction (down) uses your strongest finger, the index finger.

I don't know what your mean by "Not only because the most used used direction (↓) would be closer to my "neutral" finger position" - what is your neutral finger position?

I also got lost in the sentence about "back" and "forwards" - what is back and forwards?

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myfonj 363 days ago
> what is back and forwards?

Sorry, I didn't realise that was unclear. By "back" and "forwards", I mean movement through the flow of text relative to the cursor position. Given any reference point in linear text, all surrounding content either precedes or follows that point. Moving through preceding content is "going back", and moving through following content is "going forwards". When we move to the preceding line (↑) or preceding character (←), we're going "back". When we move to the following line (↓) or following character (→), we're moving "forwards". My point was that ← ↓ ↑ → effectively represents "back one character — forward one line — back one line — forward one character", which feels counter-intuitive to me.

> strongest finger, the index finger.

Interesting. As far as I now, middle finger is usually considered stronger than the index finger. Index finger might be more dextrous, though (?). Personally, I also slightly prefer the middle finger for rapid pressing over the index finger, but cannot see strong definitive advantage of either one. (I guess most of us use the middle finger for regular ↑↓ keys, as well as W/S in WASD bindings in games/project just fine, and using index finger in that context instead would feel odd.)

> what is your neutral finger position?

Mostly index finger on "K". (So I guess I'd prefer having "down" (being the most frequently used when VIM binding is involved) on "L", where my middle finger usually dwells, and "K" for moving up, if I had to invent it from scratch.)

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