Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site alberta.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!alberta!jeff@alberta.UUCP (C. J. Sampson)
From: jeff@alberta.UUCP (C. J. Sampson)
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: h,j,k,l in vi
Message-ID: <413@alberta.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 17-Feb-85 14:44:43 EST
Article-I.D.: alberta.413
Posted: Sun Feb 17 14:44:43 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 19-Feb-85 06:48:46 EST
References: <8242@brl-tgr.ARPA> <726@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA>
Sender: jeff@alberta.UUCP
Reply-To: jeff@alberta.UUCP (C. J. Sampson)
Organization: his Personal Computer
Lines: 33

>Great. Now if we can only get those who do remember history to forget it,
>so we can do things right.  One of the things that bothers me most about
>BSD is the habit of taking a mediocre implementation of a good idea, and
>using it over and over again.  To wit: nearly every thing that needs motion
>on a screen uses the "vi" command set (plug: see dbell@daisy's *very* slick
>life for an example), and far to many things (more than 0) have files that
>look like /etc/termcap.

  I have two points to make here:

  1) I feel that the [hjkl] set of cursor keys is very convienent.  I don't
     have to take my hands off of home row to move around, and this speeds
     up my editing.  I don't like using arrow keys for the same reason that
     I don't like using a mouse: it forces me to take my hand off the proper
     place in the keyboard, and then I have to take the time to put it back
     in the proper place and make sure it is aligned correctly.

  2) That fact that the large majority of programs use [hjkl] for cursor
     movement is good.  This is known as consistency.  Since most programs
     use them, you don't have to learn a new set of cursor keys whenever
     you switch from rogue to snake.  I'd rather not fumble around every
     time I start a new program that needs cursor control.  Consistency
     in general makes a lot of things far more easily understandable.
     If you see a file containing several items seperated by colons on
     each line, you can make the assumption that the colon is a delimiter,
     because it was done that way before.  Better one consistent mediocore
     implementation than several hundred good implementations.

=====================================================================
	Curt Sampson		ihnp4!alberta!jeff
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"It looked like something resembling white marble, which was probably
 what is was: something resembling white marble."