Not sure why this is downvoted. It's one of the more serious technical concerns I've seen here.
Imagine you'd be able to buy a dongle with adhesive strip at the bottom in the shape of the touch bar. I am sure Shenzhen is already working on that.
You can use ctrl-[ instead of esc in vim.
Re:MacBook Pro
by Matthias247 on Thursday October 27, 2016 @03:52PM
(#12809171)
On a german keyboard layout that's somewhere between hardly typeable (requires 3 keys) on Mac and impossible on other OSes (Ctrl+AltGr == AltGr == No Ctrl)
Re:MacBook Pro
by metafunctor on Thursday October 27, 2016 @04:32PM
(#12809713)
From what I've understood, on a German keyboard you type Control + Ü for ESC, instead of some three-key combo.
Re:MacBook Pro
by Matthias247 on Thursday October 27, 2016 @04:40PM
(#12809825)
Just tested it on my Mac. It's Ctrl + Ä. So this works. However haven't tested yet of what windows/mingw does with this.
Re:MacBook Pro
by Matthias247 on Friday October 28, 2016 @04:14AM
(#12813959)
If anybody is interested: In Windows it works with Ctrl + Ü.
Sarcasm aside, I wonder how well this will work if you use Boot Camp. Does the TouchBar revert to a normal function bar when OS isn't in control of it? Let's say I don't use VMware, and I want to boot into Linux or Windows, what happens to the TouchBar? Installing Linux or non-OS X operating system could be made more difficult without function keys. And yes, VIM and other modal editors are going to be less fun with the loss of tactile ESC.
I'm hoping the TouchBar will have some failsafe firmware mode that allows normal use of Func keys when OS doesn't have control over it.
The worst possible case in my mind is buying a small, tiny external keyboard (dongle) with just the Func keys if Boot Camp doesn't have a good solution.