Vim: transitioning from mouse to movement

Question

I use MacVim (and gvim) a lot. I'm familiar with and use a lot of the basic movement commands (b, w, $, 0, G). However, for a lot of things—such as selecting particular lines on the screen or jumping to a particular column in a different line—I use the mouse (sometimes in concert with my left hand on the keyboard). It also helps that my mouse has a scroll wheel and buttons for changing tabs.

I also need to admit... I use the arrow keys on my keyboard rather than hjkl.

I think that my speed (and posture at the computer) will be improved by not having to escape from insert mode, and from keeping both hands on the main part of the keyboard.

What convinced you to abandon the mouse? What are the most helpful shortcuts for moving quickly between lines and columns, scrolling, etc.?

This question is inspired by this recent post

Answer 1

I think that my speed (and posture at the computer) will be improved by not having to escape from insert mode

No, you must escape from insert mode right after you typed what you want. It quickly becomes a reflex, so you don't really lose time (I sometimes even press escape after completing a web form...). Normal mode isn't just for moving around, it's used to perform most operations (save from typing): for instance deleting or moving sections of text. You also benefit from entering insert mode with the appropriate key: o to start a line, S to replace a line (while keeping indentation), A to move to the end of the line, c+motion to replace a few words or until a given character... All of these save keystrokes.

The mouse seems fast, but in reality it isn't precise, so you lose time (in addition to the constant back and forth with the keyboard). ViM has a long list of moving commands (see :help usr_03) which, when mastered, are faster than the mouse in most situations.

Use search the most you can (/, ?, *, #, f, t...). I personally use Ctrl+(d,u,f,b) a lot. Also, Ctrl+(o, i) and `` are really useful to go back where you were before a search or something else.

h, j, k, l are there to place your right hand near to useful commands (i, u, o...): I always have my fingers on them. The arrows force you to move your hand a lot.

Try to look at a few commands in :help, then use them a lot, and you'll get habits about what you should use to move according to the situation. Nobody uses ViM the same way.

Answer 2

The more I used the keyboard movement in vim, the less I wanted to use the mouse. It doesn't help that extended periods of time where I'm constantly moving from keyboard to mouse can take a toll on my wrist.

If you want to force doing things the vim way, unplug your mouse for a while! The more you use the keyboard, the more you will love it. This worked for me.

For moving between lines, I usually just use jk but I often skip to lines using :line_num. Getting to a specific column in a line, I typically use wbe^0$ and put modifiers in front of w, b, or e if I'm skipping through several words. And there is also the shifted versions, WBE which also come in handy often.

Answer 3

I have to admit that I often use the arrow keys for specific movement in vim. I rarely use hjkl. However, I find that most of my navigation is done with other commands such as w (skip a word forward), b (skip a word backwards). Combine this with modifiers such as 3w (3 words forward). : skip to a specific line.

I've never really had to abandon the mouse since I never really started with it. All I can say is that attempting to use editors without all the keyboard shortcuts that vim has can feel quite painful.

Answer 4

I'd run vimtutor from the command line (Terminal.app in OS X). It runs vim with a tutorial document. That document was what really made me realize the power of some of the commands. You'll pick up some that are most useful to you and gain more over time. Eventually you'll find yourself using the mouse less and less.

Answer 5

One command that will really improve your movement speeds is f. f plus a character will jump to the first occurrence of that character on the current line. Pressing ; will jump to the next occurrence. Of course this can be used in combination with other commands. So, for example, removing all characters up to and including the first closing parenthesis is achieved by pressing d+f+).

Answer 6

You can seriously revolve your life around jk in hjkl.

nnoremap <c-k> ddkP "move current line up one
nnoremap <c-j> ddp "move current line down one
vnoremap <c-j> dp'[V'] "move visual block down one
vnoremap <c-k> dkP'[V'] "move visual block up one

"These may be a bit more esoteric to me"
inoremap jj <esc>o "Insert mode can move to next line (works mid line)
inoremap kk <esc>O "Insert mode new line on previous line 

also for the desktop gui (ion3 and gnome)

winj - next window

wink - prev window

(This beats alttab if your editing in vim all day)

also read :he motion.txt in its entirety using j and k to scroll up and down as you do.

Answer 7

I learned vi so for me the mouse has never been something to use with a text editor.

I don't use hjkl except when the machine/network/keyboard/whatever-in-between is not comfortably configured.

Answer 8

Use the mouse where it makes sense. It often does (copy/paste to and from other gui applications).

To answer your question, though: Once you start using vim as a tool for transforming text bits with macros, the movements will all start to fall into place ;)

Answer 9

I think you're wondering if there's a quick way to move around while in insert mode (without using the mouse or arrow keys) but unfortunately there isn't; you have to escape out of insert mode. However I know that jumping all the way to your Esc key can be really annoying, which is why I've gotten into the habit of escaping with Ctrl+c, it's much faster.

Answer 10

I almost never use hjkl because it's too tedious. I usually try to jump right to where I want to go. There's a great cheat sheet out there (a Dvorak version is a available also (although it's in PDF)) that you can stare at and imagine the possibilities.

Mostly I use f, F, t, and T, and sometimes they're enhanced by typing a number up front like d2t) will delete up to the second close paren. Sometimes I use search. A lot of the time I use w, W, b, B, e, and E. They're all fantastic.

When I see vim users arrowing all over the place in visual mode just to delete text it makes me shudder, because there are so much easier ways (and hjkl only make you move your arm less, they don't change the number of button presses).

Something I did that I don't know if it's common or not is remapped my arrow keys to be <Esc><Up> and so on. For whatever reason I started out always arrowing around and assuming I'd be back in normal mode, so I just made it do that...

The biggest bummer about Vim is that now when I edit anything anywhere else I hit escape all of the time and type :w after every change...