I’ve been using Dvorak for years and for vim & similiar (emacs evil, tridactyl, etc) I just use normal hjkl. j and k are next to each other on Dvorak, which is easy enough and I tend to use w,b, f/t, incremental search, or semantic jumping methods more than h/l movements anyway.

I do also have a layer on my keyboard with arrow keys, which I have on what would be ijkl on QWERTY (i.e. right-side WASD).

I’m using Colemak, but also on an Atreus, which is programmed to have arrow keys under the left hand (esdf). I still have some muscle memory left of just using the awkward placements before I got the Atreus, but at this point I don’t see a good reason to not just use the better positioned and more widely supported arrow keys.

IMO, give up on the bizarrely macho idea that hjkl is uniquely amazing and use the arrow keys.

Thanks for all the suggestions and it’s great to hear all the different ideas people have tried and sometimes kept because they work for them.

I’m going to start by taking olly’s advice (thanks!) and using keys on the home row or thereabouts - with a key being held down to activate them. I was wondering if having both my keyboard and editor be modal would be confusing and it sounds like it is.

I didn’t mention anything other than being on a non-qwerty layout. For posterity, I’m on a Redox board with a layout ‘inspired’ by Workman. I’ve re-arranged the letter keys somewhat and I’ve left most of the keys around the edge unmapped, with my plan being to minimise finger stretching and use layers for numbers and less-common symbols.

I made myself a little on-screen keyboard app so I can see my layout and which keys I’m pressing (they highlight as I type) and can avoid peering down all the time - and I’m busy with typing tutors trying to get my WPM back up. No wrist pain at all so far but I’m at less than half usual speed!

I’m on Workman. I mapped Caps Lock + Y N E O to left, down, up and right. Here’s my xmodmap.

I use vim and Norman and don’t do anything about them. They’re in odd, arbitrary places, but they were odd and arbitrary anyways. It hasn’t been any hassle. I still use qwerty on staggered keyboards regularly so Ididn’t want to relearn all the keys I’d have to remap to keep movement on the home row.

I switched to Colemak and committed to using hjkl where they are in Colemak, and it’s actually been more intuitive for me than the qwerty hjkl positions.

For those curious, Colemak hjkl positions:

j  l
 h   
   k

Why not just use the arrow keys? We use hjkl because the ADM-3A terminal didn’t have arrow keys. The hjkl is nice but not a gamechanger.

EDIT: Okay falling down a rabbit hole on the history of keyboard keys, there might be a lot more to this story than the ADM

I use Colemak and I remapped the keys like this. For me comfort is the most important thing and I don’t like the idea of not having at least up & down on the home row.

It does sometimes take some effort, but I don’t change editors that often so I personally think it’s worth it. I’ve been using vscode now for several years and it’s perfect. I guess there are some editors that can’t be remapped, but it hasn’t happened to me yet.

My keyboard doesn’t have arrow keys, so I also have a layer on my keyboard that puts the arrow keys in the classic vim position, which I find also works really nicely, though I don’t use that in vim-enabled editors. I activate it by holding a left thumb key down.

…to allow me to use the keys at the qwerty hjkl positions after pressing a ‘mode’ key.

When I first switched to having my arrow keys on a separate layer on my keyboard, I had it activated modally (rather than by holding down a key) and for me that didn’t work well. I thought I’d get used to it eventually but having modes in my keyboard and also modes in vim meant I could never keep track of which mode either was in. After trying to get used to it for a couple months I gave up and switched to activating my movement layer by holding a key instead of just pressing a key, and that felt so much better.

After writing this I’m now wondering why remap vim and my keyboard, I guess it was because I didn’t get a keyboard like this until a few years later and I was already used to the way I remapped vim. I think if I got the keyboard first I’d forget about remapping vim. So I’d say go for it with your keyboard layer (but consider making it a hold layer instead of a modal layer, or at least try both before deciding).

I use the neo2-keyboard layout, which has a layer that maps the arrow-keys to the (qwerty) wasd-keys. I think this is better than using hjkl, because i don’t have to move my hands of the home-row and it works in every program that allows arrow-key-navigation (including vi).

I rebind:

" colemak
" arrows => hnei  (qwerty hjkl)
" undo => l       (qwerty u)
" insert => u     (qwerty i)
" nextsearch => k (qwerty n)
noremap n j
noremap e k
noremap i l
noremap k n
noremap u i
noremap l u

My keyboard has arrow keys split across the halves that I hit with my thumbs. Up and down on the right side and left and right on the left side.

(colemak-dh mod) I do some swaps to retain up/down home row. In my vimrc it looks likes this:

noremap e k
noremap n j
noremap k n
noremap K N
noremap N J

I need a better visual… 3 out of 4 of these orthogonal keys are handled with my right index finger. BUT that’s ok, because really I care a lot more about the NE (up/down) motions than LH (left/right), I find with the usual vim motions (tTfF, wWbB, s, /) work well for moving sideways, and I use the vertical motions for menu stuff all the time (shell history, dmenu, browser interfaces)

As a colemak user I remapped everything on vim, vimiumFF, ranger and zathura to my convenience. It doesn’t really take that much, I also skipped things that I didn’t really need to use

I am using the norman layout. I have a few remaps:

noremap n h
noremap i j
noremap o k
noremap h l
noremap l o
noremap ; i
noremap k n
noremap K N

noremap <C-W>n <C-W>h
noremap <C-W>i <C-W>j
noremap <C-W>o <C-W>k
noremap <C-W>h <C-W>l

This actually leaves hjkl 1 key shifted to the right - which makes sense, since proper home row placement leaves your index finger on the (qwerty) j, not h.

Personally, I have been using BÉPO for 4 or 5 years now, and I have decided to use this opportunity to remap hjkl in vim to jkl: (as they are printed in qwerty layout, wich translates to tsrn in bépo). This right shift allows me not to move my end to move the cursor. I am pretty happy about this.

I started using Colemak before actually starting to use Vim, and when I switched to (neo)vim and started learning that, I rebound the keys in an…interesting way: nest. On QWERTY, that’d be jkdf—so it is still on the home row but split across both hands.

st are up/down, and are easily usable left-handed to browse. When I used vimium, I liked that because it meant I could left-hand scroll while still using the mouse with my right hand. Now it’s just habit.

ne are right/left (in that order—i.e. they’re inverted: the leftward key moves right). I don’t know why I inverted them. Maybe because M-n for “next window” in xmonad was an easy mnemonic. Maybe just because it felt right at the time. I don’t really use these keys when editing text, but my xmonad keybindings are the same for 2d window navigation and they do get used there.

I switched to acme and only use the mouse and shortcuts to jump to end-of-line and start-of-line. I tried Vim after switching to Dvorak (and later Workman) and was never able to use hjkl. Vim is for n00bs without real computers.

Dvorak user here. vim, emacs, and the standard Ctrl/Command C, X, V, Z – all non-issues for me. You just get used to it.

What’s actually more of an issue is video games that default to right-handed-ness. I can hardly blame developers for that, but it’s a chore having to remap, new game after new game, WASD to arrow keys, and whatever else is focused around there (QWE, ZXC, Tab, Left Shift, etc.).

Not an answer to your question, but:

40%: Moving by searching (/ and n / p)

Take a look at f/F/t/T. More efficient one-letter searches on the same line.

I use a layered keyboard on the computer where I do most of my coding (an Ergodox EZ) and I type using Colemak. I have a layer on my keyboard that replaces NEIO (JKL; on the QWERTY keyboard) with HJKL. Its additionally nice in that I don’t have to shift my hand over one key to get into the right “position” for movement.

I use a modified Dvorak layout on a datahand keyboard. It’s not too hard to use hjkl in their current place. It is a little frustrating at first but that’s how you know that you’re learning. Just keep at it.

I use Dvorak and this is why I love the layout-agnostic keybindings of Emacs. I could never get used to evil-mode or anything. I have ersatz Emacsen (like mg) wherever I can’t have GNU Emacs just so that I can continue to use the familiar keybindings.

By the way, there’s a plugin for Dvorak keybindings in vim.

I use Dvorak. When I use vim, it’s standard key layout jkhl. Mostly I use Sublime Text / Visual Studio &c so I guess I’m not an hjkl’er. I do use Ctrl/option-arrow to jump by word & delete by word, that suffices. I find that generally I am not limited by my typing speed, but knowing what to type. I mean, a 500-word essay should take minutes, if only. A 1500-loc library should take maybe an hour to type out, again if only. On OS X, I love using readline shortcuts (again, not an hjkl’er).

Full time dvorak user. I got used the positions of hjkl. I try to minimize one-character movements, though.

Having hjkl neatly near each other is only important if you’re moving around by holding them down and relying on key repeats. Then you can quickly back up when you overshoot the target. If I’m feeling lazy and want to move around like that, I use the cursors. If I want to do something like d5j I use j and would never even consider the down cursor. I think of the command and typing it is like typing the actual text.

So leave them where they are is my advice.

Dvorak user here. I remap htns, qwerty’s jkl;, to hjkl in all applications to get spatial navigation. This also frees up d, qwerty’s h, to be used for delete in vim/kakoune/qutebrowser. However new locations for tns are needed and I’ve been using kgl for that. This leaves j free and I use that as a leader (as well as , and z).

I use a customised version of Colemak-DH. I just use the regular Vim keys. The K being above the J took some getting used to, but nowadays I don’t really think about it. I thought about rebinding them, but then I probably have to rebind a bunch of other keys as well.

Dvorak dvp here. It doesn’t matter to me where hjkl are, I just use them where they are (jcvp on a qwerty layout). I also use yubn for diagonal moves in nethack and others.

colemak vimmer here for almost 10 years now?

I also just use colemak style hjkl. no remapping.

I use Colemak positions… except with swapped up-down: map global normal j k; map global normal k j

Because obviously the up key should be physically higher and the down key should be lower!

My navigation probably works out like this

Mine is 99% moving by { paragraph }. Okay I’m obviously massively exaggerating but I do it all the time and I don’t understand how others don’t use it :D

A bit off-topic, but is there some plugin that would give me statistics of what am i typing in command mode in (neo)vim?

I use https://neo-layout.org/. Perfect for German and English und coding.

I use dvorak but I never remap the keys in vim and kakoune, I never felt the need to. The only place I found troublesome are those keyboard shortcuts such as ctrl-x, ctrl-c and ctrl-v.