Musing on emacs keymappings and "vim mode" for Lispworks

I got Lispworks Pro as the next-best-thing to a Lisp Machine -- it's multithreaded, multi-windows, integrated, has editor source, and is generally cool. I liked that it had editor source because I figured I'd want to change a few things, or maybe more than a few things.

I got to actually using it a bit, and found I didn't really care for the Emacsy modelessness. I've used vi/Vim since 1991; I'm really used to hjkl and esc (or, in my case, usually Ctrl-[), and all the rest. I like that I can move the cursor around one-handed with hjkl, whereas with the Emacs keybindings all the movement commands are shifted in some way, and many of them require you to move your hands away from the home-rows (hjkl in Vim map to C-b, C-n, C-p, and C-f). If you use opposite hands to press Ctrl and key (e.g. left hand for Ctrl, right hand for p; right hand for Ctrl, left hand for b), then you even have to move both hands just to change from going up/down to left/right.

So basically I got to thinking, how hard would it be to a) write some mode support, and b) add some Vim bindings to it?

It wasn't that hard to do the hjkl stuff, but thinking about the "command pending" mode (like d$) took a little more work. Nothing insurmountable, certainly, just more than simply mapping a different key to the "Next Line" command.

But that extra work made me pause ... maybe I'm using the editor wrong. I got used to editing code (and viewing code and so forth) in a certain way because I use Vim exclusively. Maybe I should "empty my cup" and try the editor on its own terms, and get way more familiar with the move by form commands (e.g. "Forward Form", "Backward Form", that sort of thing).

In any case, I bet I could safely redefine C-h, C-j, C-k, and C-l, and that would solve many of my problems immediately.

tags: lispworks  emacs  vim  modeless editing  vim mode  

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