Vintage Computer

Hard disagree. Modal editing makes no sense in current year. It and vi were designed for terminals without Pg Up/Down keys.[0] Looks like no End either, although there's a Home.

Times have changed. It's so awful to get used to, and the alternative is just reaching for Home/End/Pg Up/Pg Down. Gimmie a break, fam. (What's ironic is that most people I know who love vim do use those keys, so they're paying the speed penalty of not having to reach for them for nothing -- plus the million penalties of using a terminal editor, and a byzantine one at that.)

Also, ever wonder why the movement keys are HJKL and not the home row's JKL;, which would be far better and more intuitive? Glance back at that picture; for no good reason, the manufacturer of those terminals decided to put arrows on HJKL. And so, in inertial carryover of dumb design, vi's creator decided those should be the movement keys.

Sorry, time to eject from this fossilized ride from the '70s and into the 21st century.

0: http://vintagecomputer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/LSI-ADM3A-full-keyboard.jpg

The first thing I do on a new system is map my Caps Lock key to Escape[1][2][3] so that I can use Vim conveniently without having to reach the physical Escape key placed awkwardly at the corner of the keyboard.

The choice of Escape key to return to normal mode and H, J, K, L for navigation makes total sense if we look at the original Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminal[4] that Bill Joy used while creating vi, but in the modern day keyboard, the choice of Escape key to return to normal mode really disturbs the otherwise fine ergonomics of using Vim.

[1]: https://github.com/susam/uncap#uncap

[2]: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Map_caps_lock_to_escape_in_Windows#Utilities

[3]: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Map_caps_lock_to_escape_in_XWindows#Comment_from_tip_327_.28now_removed.29

[4]: https://vintagecomputer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/LSI-ADM3A-full-keyboard.jpg

Model M’s all use a membrane and a plastic barrel frame. https://deskthority.net/wiki/IBM_Enhanced_Keyboard

The capacitive keyboard was the Model F. Instead of the plastic barrel frame, it uses separate plastic barrels held between two metal sheets, and the little conductive plastic flippers trigger capacitive pads on a PCB. https://deskthority.net/wiki/IBM_Model_F

There are pictures of the insides of a Model F XT keyboard here, http://vintagecomputer.ca/ibm-pc-model-f-keyboard-type-1-vs-type-2/

Here are pictures of someone modding a 122-key Model F https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11102

Do you even vi? Remove everything! Here's a link to the pic of the keyboard for which vi was originally designed on:

http://vintagecomputer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/LSI-ADM3A-full-keyboard.jpg

I completely agree with your post. Removing the home/end & function keys is such a waste given the amount of free space for keys on every single notebook ever made.

edit: I realized I hadn't taken my initial argument to complete absurdity, "Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA

The choice of escape in Vi was because it was originally developed for a keyboard like this terminal.

https://vintagecomputer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/LSI-ADM3A-full-keyboard.jpg

Where escape is in a similar place to tab on PC keyboards. Also note the arrows on the home row.

Most dedicated vim users will move to using C-[ probably with caps lock mapped to Ctrl.

Other alternatives are map caps lock to escape or even have caps lock as escape when pressed and ctrl when held.