I wonder what it would be like to design a phone keyboard specifically to be used with vim

[joshg@mathstodon.xyz]

@mcc
or emacs
*ducks*

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@joshg that sounds easier

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@aredridel phone keyboards are already modal

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@a2_4am so I can quit vi

[aredridel@kolektiva.social]

@mcc Quite. But mostly we're stuffing them into QWERTY-shaped boxes, and purely as input, not as _editing_ beyond cursor moving and backspace.

[bitofabother@swingset.social]

@mcc a usable escape key 🤤

[fluffy@plush.city]

@mcc The one in Termius (iOS) is pretty well suited to it, especially if you add : to the quick-access strip.

[hyc@mastodon.social]

@mcc the Touch Pro 2's keyboard was pretty excellent. https://m.gsmarena.com/htc_touch_pro2-pictures-2690.php

With the adjustable tilt, I haven't seen any other phone get this right.

[orb2069@mastodon.online]

@mcc
Tired - swapping ctrl & caps lock
Wired - swapping esc & caps lock

[chrisamaphone@hci.social]

@mcc lowkey this might be a path forward in the "editing text (after entering it) on a phone is a completely miserable user experience" problem

[bob@feed.hella.cheap]

@mcc have you seen the nine square grid system that psp homebrew uses

[hyc@mastodon.social]

@mcc but if you're just talking about onscreen keyboards, Hacker Keyboard is it.

[docbohn@techhub.social]

@hyc @mcc As someone who's used Happy Hacking Keyboards for mumblety-mumble years, I get where you're coming from on that on-screen keyboard.

But if I were designing an on-screen keyboard to be optimized for vi, the `:` character would not require pressing the Shift key or a long-press.

[vikxin@beach.city]

@fluffy @mcc I can second this. I use it fairly frequently

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@bob no :O

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@Orb2069 phone keyboards typically have neither particularly

[hyc@mastodon.social]

@DocBohn @mcc I'm surprised no one has done a keyboard with configurable keys yet.

[bob@feed.hella.cheap]

@mcc https://github.com/PSP-Archive/DanzeffOSLib if you use both thumbs and the shoulder buttons you can input any key with no more than two actions and without having to hunt for anything. seems like a natural fit for mode-based editing

[futuristicrobert@infosec.exchange]

@urig @mcc

that's a special implant for using EMACS.

[snoopj@hachyderm.io]

@rk @mcc this is still my biggest bugbear when I want to use vim from mobile, the muscle memory for ESC is hard to break, but one or another thing in my mobile stack treats ESC on my (hardware) keyboard as "home button", rendering vim pretty useless.

I have some mapping in my .vimrc for "I need ESC to mode-shift but I can't actually use it" but I could not tell you what it is.

I agree with what was expressed elsewhere in the thread that "keyboard" may be a limiting abstraction for a mobile device. It could be interesting to mode-shift with gestures, for instance. (OTOH, keyboards are still Pretty Goddamned Good, so)