How do touch typists navigate in vi?

Question

I'm learning vi, as I appreciate the vast possibilities of the editor, and have to use a plain-text editor for my current project. In many tutorials I have read that it is recommended to use the keys "h", "j", "k" and "l" instead of the arrow keys, for the sake of speed.

However, as a touch typist, my fingers are normally in the default position of a, s, d, f (left hand) and j, k, l and ö (right hand [german keyboard]). Navigating in vi requires effectively to place the right hand in the default position of h, j, k and l. This makes writing text correctly hard, as I notice constantly that I start to type text, when my right hand is in the "vi right hand position" instead of the "touch-typing right hand position".

As a touch typist, have you adapted your hand memory so that you have switch the position depending on the vi mode, or have you found some other solution? I would appreciate experiences and tips from experienced touch typists using vi.

Answer 1

I still keep my fingers on the home keys for touch typing, and just reach for the keys I want. My index finger is used for both h and j. I'm not often switching between h and j anyway, so it doesn't slow me down.

I find I use w, b, 0, f and / to navigate though, not so much with h, j, k and l.

BTW. I found it really hard to write this message into the browser text box. When typing about vi keys, my fingers naturally wanted to use them. Please excuse any extraneous characters :-)