Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!ncar!tank!nucsrl!gore
From: gore@eecs.nwu.edu (Jacob Gore)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Looking for a Simple Text Editor
Message-ID: <3910021@eecs.nwu.edu>
Date: 31 Aug 88 21:57:09 GMT
References: <4912@fluke.COM>
Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA
Lines: 22

In article <640005@hpcvca.HP.COM> charles@hpcvca.HP.COM (Charles Brown) writes:
>...  Would you care to explain
>what the four following are supposed to stand for?
>	k  previous-line	keep moving back?  :-{
>	j  next-line		jump forward?	   :-/
>	l  forward-character	lunge? or launch?  :-)
>	h  backward-character	harken back?	   :-]

/ comp.emacs / irf@kuling.UUCP (Bo Thide) / Aug 29, 1988 /
>These keys are the ones which you use as arrow keys on
>certain (older) terminals (ADM?). On newer terminals you use
>the normal arrow keys, of course.

Back in 1980, a friend of mine and I were writing our own screen editor.
We were not familiar with vi then (or rogue, or any of those...).

We chose ^h, ^j, ^k, ^l to mean left, down, up, right.  Why?  Well, ^h was
already backspace, ^j was already linefeed, so we chose the other too for
symmetry.

Jacob Gore				Gore@EECS.NWU.Edu
Northwestern Univ., EECS Dept.		{oddjob,gargoyle,att}!nucsrl!gore