[conspire] Hardware hack for vim

[Nick Moffitt]

Mike Higashi:
> This might be useful only if you're always using a single workstation
> to do your editing.  "vim clutch" is a great name, though.
> 
> http://hackaday.com/2012/06/21/building-a-clutch-for-vim/

It really is a great name, but I'm a bit baffled by the implementation.
I feel like it betrays a lack of proficiency with vim, if nothing else.

In general, we vim users spend most of our time in "normal mode", which
is where editing commands are parsed.  Sure you get long stretches of
text input, but by and large you're *editing* text.  That's fine, and
this device seems to support that bias a little.

But it appears that the only way to get into insert mode is by sending
an 'i' keystroke.  While it's true that 'i' is the mechanism for
dropping into insert mode that you learn first, I have found it to be
increasingly rare in my vim use.  Instead, I tend to use one of O, o, I,
A, s, or the c<movement> commands.  I am more likely to use 'a' to
append text after the cursor than I am to insert it before.  I'm more
likely to insert a line above or below the cursor, or to want to put
text at the beginning or end of a line.  

I think my most common use of 'i' is when I've been using w or b to move
by word taking the cursor to words' beginnings.  Conversely, I use 'a' a
lot when traveling by word with the e key (I'll confess to not
remembering the equivalent for backward travel, as I'll tend to key in
something like bbbbea<text> to append to word a few words back).

If you never learn anything else about vi, please start using w and b to
move by word, ( and ) to move by sentence, and { and } to move by
paragraph.  You'll find yourself thinking in terms of your text instead
of the character grid, and it's quite liberating.

-- 
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with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
> _