I want to see the keyboard keystroke count for your best vim sequence, which will require a pause to plan out prior to execution, whatever you come up with. This sequence requires zero thought or planning prior to execution. Four mouse clicks total, plus four target aiming tasks for these clicks. Three keyboard keys total (Ctrl, Alt, Backspace), each pressed and released once.Ģ. Alt-click just past the end of each of the 4 strings to be deleted.ġ. delete the two occurrences of 'const' from 'const char * const s'ġ. What is the fastest sequence of vim commands toĢ. Given the following in your editing buffer,Ĭonst char *const s = 'Dennis Ritchie little-loved 'const'.' > Please do look into vim's regular expressions Please do look into vim's regular expressions, there's a surprising amount of stuff that they can do which most people are not aware of. I have found the regular expressions that vim has as well as the structural regular expressions in Sam and Acme to be far better at describing operations which need to occur in multiple places. But from what I actually remember, most of my time with multiple-cursors has been spent trying to reason about how applying a certain input in 5 different places will affect the text, and then undoing mistakes. This might be because I don't work from a desktop and use a trackpoint, or maybe because when I do use a desktop I use a trackball. I'm sure there's some situations where multiple cursors are faster than using editor commands, but the point I was making is that in general I've found multiple-cursors to just be a distraction which slows me down. The question is if multiple-cursors are a good use of the mouse. That aside, the question is not if utilising a mouse well makes for a faster interface than restricting the interface to only using the keyboard. Text editors such as VSCode suck in comparison in terms of their mouse usage, the way Acme uses mice is worlds different from the extremely boring and inefficient use of mice that VSCode has.

I should point out that mouse driven interfaces are only better than keyboard driven interfaces when designed competently to actually take advantage of mice (e.g. Yes, I am aware of Acme and Sam and I am aware that good mouse driven interfaces are faster than using keyboard driven interfaces. VSCodium does everything I need but is ultra-bloated and I'd love lighter weight. Acme doesn't have multiple cursors though and needs some TLC, it doesn't talk to an X server efficiently and draw pixels efficiently because it's based on Plan 9's drawterm. You can also do ':/re1/,/re2/' and unlike vim this won't grab to the beginning of line before /re1/, etc. ':#3,#42' selects character 3 through 42 regardless of how many newlines are between char 3 and 42 and does not select to the beginning of the line before char 3 nor to the end of the line after char 42. The Sam/Acme editing language is not line-oriented like ed/vi/vim, e.g. Then some switched to Plan 9's Acme in the 1990s, which retains Sam's editing language. The Unix gods switched to the Sam editor in the early 1980s which is a bit like a mouse-oriented re-imagining of vi. I know this because I've used vim more than 20 years, and I also learned ed's and sam's editing languages used by the original Unix gods. If I need to double-backspace five different caret positions visible on screen, I can Ctrl-click (or Alt-click) to set multiple cursors faster than a master vimmer's brain can devise a suitable ':s/././g' command to accomplish the same thing. Then shall all the world see that mouse users best the Rodentless in battle. There needs to be a text editing competition organized with prize money. Anchoring at the keyboard is not the fastest way to edit text. Pianists can rapidly move their hands to 100% accurately strike keys more than a foot away at blink-of-the-eye speed because they practice, and master mouse users can flick their hand from keyboard to mouse to keyboard again at blink-of-the-eye speed if they practice. Pointing at things on a computer screen and clicking is a highly competitive activity involving billions of dollars annually pro gaming mouse designs have evolved to be lightweight and extremely efficient at this task. The mouse is the fastest way to point to something on your computer screen, especially a quality gaming mouse with mouse acceleration disabled. The Acme editor, used by C creator Dennis Ritchie, converted me to the Rodent Religion.

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