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Re:Here is why vim uses the hjkl keys as arrow keys by wavetossed on Friday March 09, 2012 @11:20AM (#3684635)
ADM3a was a terminal, not a computer. I used to use these two in around 1976 or so. And the hjkl pattern has nothing to do with this or any other terminal. The ASCII control codes for Ctrl-H, Ctrl-J, Ctrl-K and Ctrl-L were used to make the Teletype's printing carriage move left, down, up or right. Bill Joy's innovation was "modes" so that Ctrl-H did not delete the character when it moved left, etc...
Re:Here is why vim uses the hjkl keys as arrow keys by fanf2 on Saturday March 10, 2012 @03:32AM (#3687427)

  8 H backspace
  9 I tab (right a lot)
 10 J line feed (down)
 11 K vertical tab (down a lot)
 12 L form feed (down a page)
 13 M carriage return (left a line)
Re:Here is why vim uses the hjkl keys as arrow keys by kragen on Monday March 12, 2012 @02:26PM (#3694704)
Bill Joy didn't invent modes; all editors were very modeful until Bravo, in the 1970s. And in vi, you don't use ^H to move left; you use h. Tony has already corrected you on ^K and ^L, but I'll point out that there was a way to move the carriage right on a Teletype, even though it wasn't ^L: the SPACE character does that.