On Sat, 2022-07-23 at 01:03 -0400, Jon LaBadie wrote:
On Fri, Jul 22, 2022 at 05:42:44PM -0500, Roger Heflin wrote:
On Fri, Jul 22, 2022 at 2:35 PM James Szinger jszinger@gmail.com wrote:
...
I first encountered UNIX after years of using VMS, IBM mainframes, and a plethora of personal computers. They ALL had editors better than vi. Who writes an editor where the arrow keys don’t work!
Someone with a serial terminal with no arrow keys, or arrow keys that did not work consistently between differing terminal types.
And the design intent was to allow one to hit esc and use hjkl as arrow keys without removing your hands from the home keys so one could continue touch typing.
There was another aspect of the hjkl pattern. The control equivalents of those keys ^H, ^J, ^K, ^L, were the codes that moved the cursor on the adm3a terminal Bill Joy was using when he first developed the visual mode of his ex editor.
IIRC this is also where the termcap database originated, in order to allow adapting to the multiple proprietary control schemes implemented by terminal manufacturers.
poc