🔧 Back to the Roots
Those of you who, like me, care about where things come from probably already know this: the reason Bill Joy’s vi uses h, j, k, l as arrow keys, the reason esc is used to switch modes, and especially the reason Unix-like systems started abbreviating the home directory as ~ all trace back to the ADM-3A keyboard.
That’s because this is the keyboard Bill Joy was using while he developed vi.
Source: Lear Siegler’s ADM-3A computer terminal’s full keyboard
See the arrows above H, J, K, L? To move the cursor, you could press H, J, K, L together with Ctrl.
Ctrl sits to the left of A, and ESC sits to the left of Q.
A dedicated : (colon) key is located to the right of 0. Just like the dedicated ; (semicolon) key today, : (colon) had its own key.
If you look at the far right end of the top row, there’s a HOME key, and the other character printed on that same key is ~ (tilde). That’s how ${HOME} came to be written as ~ for convenience.
Source: Lear Siegler’s ADM-3A computer terminal
👍🏻TAB → ESC
Losing Tab isn’t just a problem when writing code. Tab is also useful for shell auto-completion.
However, as described below, there’s a way to keep Tab alive by using the left Ctrl key, which ends up with nothing to do.
In Vim’s insert mode, you can indent with Ctrl-T and outdent with Ctrl-D. (source)
👍🏻CAPS LOCK → CTRL
Can you remember the last time you used CAPS LOCK? (MySQL) Following the roots, change the left Caps Lock to Ctrl.
It also makes Emacs much easier to use, lol.
👍🏻CTRL_L → TAB
It would be sad to get rid of it entirely It’s still useful for things like shell auto-completion, so I’ll let it live…
🏁How?
Gnome
Use gnome-tweaks.
Plasma
Under system settings → input devices → keyboard → advanced, there are options like ‘Caps Lock is also a Ctrl’.
Others (1) - Xmodmap
Install and use xmodmap.
!
! Swap Caps_Lock and Control_L
!
remove Lock = Caps_Lock
remove Control = Control_L
keysym Control_L = Caps_Lock
keysym Caps_Lock = Control_L
add Lock = Caps_Lock
add Control = Control_L
Load it from .xinitrc or similar. (It’s usually already applied in the system xinitrc you copied.)
$ [[ -f ~/.Xmodmap ]] && xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap
Others (2) - Xkbd
$ setxkbmap -option ctrl:swapcaps # Swap Left Control and Caps Lock
➕Bonus - Hyper key
Hyper key is long gone. But if we move ctrl to caps (or tab whatever), there’s two ctrl on the left side of keyboard. So we can bring Hyper key back to life.
(ref: You can also put .Xmodmap in your .xinitrc with xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap &. I have it between the setxkbmap and xcape lines, and it has been stable.)
clear lock
clear control
clear mod1
clear mod2
clear mod3
clear mod4
clear mod5
keycode 37 = Hyper_L
add control = Control_L Control_R
add mod1 = Alt_L Alt_R Meta_L
add mod2 = Num_Lock
add mod3 = Hyper_L
add mod4 = Super_L Super_R
add mod5 = Mode_switch ISO_Level3_Shift
Side Notes
(1) QMK
Many of you who use custom keyboards probably use key remapping software (QMK). If you remap keys on a 40% keyboard in particular, why not try the setup described on this page? (Gamers are excluded, since they can expect a lot of suffering.)
40% Ortholinear (source)
(2) HHKB
There’s also the Happy Hacking Keyboard, loved by many developers; on it, the Caps Lock position has been turned into Control outright. B.. but even Delete has moved to above Enter (Return);;
I bought and use the HHKB Pro Hybrid Type-S (Snow/Blank).
It makes using emacs so comfortable. Whether it’s vim or anything else, it really seems to be one of a kind.
HHKB (source)