Historically, IBM keyboards like the 84-key on my trusty ol' XT put control left of A where it was on every other DTE/computer keyboard at the time. Unfortunately the AT keyboard put it back where it was on typewriters.

Personally, I remap caps lock on modern keyboards back to control as I use it far more often than even the shift keys. It's also how my finger memory was programmed an age ago. On typical terminals ^H is easier than reaching for backspace, ^[ for escape, ^I for tab, ^U for kill line not to mention all those handy vi and emacs editing commands. I suffer from tendinitis across the tops of my hands which is magnified by reaching for keys more than a keycap away from the home row. Control-below-shift is the worst with my little finger curling up to do the reaching.

A friend of mine drives his 928 is PCA club races. He uses levers to actuate the brake and throttle. He uses a wheel to control the steering.

That's funny and I see you're joking. Maybe you're thinking of the rudder pedals? My RWD cars have always had yaw control. The FWD cars too with some coaxing. Gas, turn, lift, countersteer, gas.... Given enough power you really don't even need to lift.

Now controlling that with the twitchiness of a joystick even if they do get the feedback right is another matter entirely. And that's coming from a person used to a very quick "sneeze and die" steering ratio. Lateral movement controls in a car are largely inferior than rotary (or pushbutton) controls because they are more easily affected by the movement of your body within the car during bumps and turns. I can hang onto a wheel or dial to steady myself and still provide usable control inputs, not so with a slider.

To counter the twitchiness, maybe you introduce acceleration into the movement: precise on-center and progressively faster steering (maybe not accel/decel) as you get to the end of travel. I predict that increases the learning curve and implementation difficulties, particularly between differing marques.

Moving to vim is still on my to-do list. You see, I've been using nvi for a very long time and I'm rather used to its implementation of various extensions. What I desire most is vim's tab-complete-everything, search history and superior UTF-8 handling.

But what are your vim vs. other vi annoyances?

The only big thing I can think of off the top of my head is the undo stack's incompatability with original BSD vi. "uu" in BSD vi and nvi undo and "un-undo" a change. In vim, this undoes the last two operations. Nvi implements the undo stack with ".", the perfectly vi-like repeat command. Thus "u." undoes the last two operations. I'm sure with some practice I can overcome this incompatability, but it's an unnecessary and most un-vi-like UI gaffe IMHO. Advice?

I rather prefer nvi's simpler if less powerful split screen capability for the fewer keystrokes alone. I don't need half a dozen buffers open at once so the clever management benefits me little. I use cscope for complex navigation. An inconsequential quibble — power to Teh Vim!

I also like the way nvi lets me fully manage my own command history just like any other edit buffer. I can prune, sort, etc. my history. Vim is rather inflexible on this point.

I just use ctrl-[ (open bracket, a.k.a. ASCII ESC). Works well on all keyboards and ctrl is a much more common keystroke so the finger memory is already there. 'Course I also map ctrl to be left of A where it was before the IBM PC/AT screwed it up. ;-)

I'm similarly lazy with backspace (ctrl-H) and tab (ctrl-I). I seem to do fine with newline.

Modal editing is a common complaint. It's just a different paradigm and a very small time investment can get most folks past it.

Only if you compile the kernel with the

-cantilever

option.

Most open relays aren't in the US, but rather in countries that don't give a rat's behind about what the FTC says.