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

[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)

[rk@mastodon.well.com]

@SnoopJ @mcc

So you’re telling me we need a phone with a single physical escape key.

[raphaelp@types.pl]

@mcc i have wondered that too

[aburka@hachyderm.io]

@mcc @joshg huh, are there any phone keyboards that actually do combos? with multitouch you could but I can't recall seeing it

[ymndoseijin@pl.comofas.org]

@mcc I used to run this thing a couple of years ago https://f-droid.org/packages/inc.flide.vi8 and although I don't really think it's much related to vim at all it's pretty cool looking

[orb2069@mastodon.online]

@mcc Android 15 has this when you double tap the shift key?

[joshg@mathstodon.xyz]

@aburka
map ctrl, alt to volume buttons, let's go
@mcc

[eigen@mattstodon.panar.ooo]

@mcc would the modal editing functionality of vim be particularly effective/efficient on a phone keyboard? (the idea of trying to use Emacs on a phone keyboad [no matter how many modifiers it provides] fills me with horror 😛)