use case of not just using arrow keys?
>>108267805Maybe fewer keys made it cheaper to produce.
>>108267805So you don't have to move your fingers from typing position
>>108267822but you still have to in order to toggle that mode
>>108267805that particular terminal didn't have them>>108267814it's not in ascii so terminals and software that even bothered to support it did so with all kinds of different keycodesthe eventual solution was termcap and notice vi clones all support arrow keys now (unless your terminal settings are borked)
>>108267805Those are the arrow keys.
This scheme would make a lot more sense if J was up and K was down.
>>108267805There were no dedicated arrow keys.
>>108268898I remember thinking that when I was first learning vim and now I honestly can't remember why I thought that
>>108267805It's on the home row
>>108267824There is a difference between using a modifier in reach of the alphamumbers and raising your hand, finding the arrow key, pushing it, then reseating your hand.
>>108268939I think it's because pressing buttons to the right usually means going to next element, which with vertical lists means going down, and vice versa. K is to the right of J so it should follow that it goes to the next element, meaning down.
>>108268939SAME>>108267824imo reaching for Esc is nowhere near as awkward as reaching for arrow keyssince I can pivot your hand to Esc which I can't really do for arrow keysalso i find moving my hand down to the arrow keys is a very awkward wrist movement especially when using a laptop, same reason I dont use the trackpad
>>108267805unironically the most useful part of VIM bindings for me was switching to those / being comfortable with them in roguelike games. numpad for movement actually feels so ass so you generally need to press so many other buttons (go up and down starts, wait, examine, rest, the 10 inventory buttons, etc.)
>>108267805ah yes my four favorite directions, hleft jdown kup and lright
>>108267805arrow keys are a psyop by big keycap to sell more keycaps