From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-people Newsgroups: fa.editor-p Title: HJKL Article-I.D.: ucb.1357 Posted: Tue Jun 15 02:27:30 1982 Received: Wed Jun 16 03:54:04 1982 >From LAWS@SRI-AI Tue Jun 15 02:24:32 1982 A note on the VI use of hjkl for cursor control: Evidently this got started because ASCII uses control-J for linefeed. Various software and hardware designers have thus built their cursor arrows around ^J for downward movement. (Or possibly ASCII picked it up from a cursor system?) The VI system uses hjkl for left/down/up/right, but I generally use the space bar for right motion. I have also seen cursor arrows in a left/right/up/down or up/down/left/right pattern, but no linear arrangement can be as satisfactory as a 2-D one. The best ^J pattern would seem to be hujk for left/up/down/right, although that does mean moving off the home keys. Even better is to forget ^J altogether. I once built an 8-direction pad using the 8 keys around j, but it wasn't very satisfactory. -- Ken Laws -------