It's all geek to me

To err is human. To really foul up you need a computer. -- From the help manual of the GViM text editor I have recently given myself a lot of opportunities to foul up. For the past few months, I have been typing using the Dvorak key mappings on my Windows XP, and for about a week now I have been using GViM, the GUI version of the famous programmer's text editor (infamous, as those who prefer simpler software would put it). I plunged into the dual shift for ergonomic reasons, after some years of reading on the Internet about Dvorak compared to QWERTY and GViM compared to other similar programs, like Crimson Editor, which was my favorite. If this all sounds geek to you, I suppose it is. A geek is what you could turn into if, like me, you have too much time on your hands at home with a computer (and too much is more than I could say for the money in my bank). Anyway, back to my newfangled tools. Getting used to them took some time, as with most other things you're unfamiliar with. If you drive an automatic-shift car after years of zipping about two in a stick-shift, you'd have the same frustration, except that instead of stomping on a clutch pedal that isn't there you'd keep thumping on a key that does something else than what you want it to do. In other words, it's something you shouldn't try if you're working in an office with deadlines hanging over your head and bosses breathing down your neck. Now on to my ergonomic reasons – and ergonomic is just a fancy way of saying that something's been designed to fit the quirks of your mind and the contours of your body. The Dvorak keyboard is designed so that keys to the most commonly used letters of the English language are in the home row. For touch typists, that's where the fingers of both hands are positioned by default. Which means that with a Dvorak keyboard, your fingers won't have to stray too far and too often from the home row. Of course, if you're not a touch typist but belong to the Hunt and Peck School of Typing this could be a bit confusing, because the letters of your keyboard remain in the old QWERTY layout, unless of course you buy a Dvorak keyboard. In either case, it probably wouldn't much matter what keyboard layout you use because you have to actually look for each letter anyway. The physical layout of the keyboard has never bothered me. It could be in Korean characters and I'd still find the letters. And it's easy to change the key mappings to Dvorak. Windows XP, as well as Linux and its various distributions, support the Dvorak layout. On Windows, you just have to change your keyboard setup in the Regional Settings of the Control Panel. Anyway, if you're interested just Google it. Among the famous people who have shifted to the Dvorak keyboard are Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and WordPress developer Matt Mullenweg, who incidentally some of us at GMANews.TV met last year in Manila for his visit to WordCamp. You can read Mulleweg's take on Dvorak in his blog: "On the Dvorak keyboard layout." As to GViM, it stands for GUI Vi Improved. Of course, GUI stands for graphical user interface and is pronounced gooey, and Vi is the Unix equivalent of Windows' Notepad, which some people have pronounced as phooey. GViM, a GUI version of the ViM console application, is a modal editor, which is one and the same reason that some like it and why some hate it – and discussion board all over the Web are ablaze with what sounds like a Holy War between ViM and Emacs users. Anyway, I have been fiddling about with GViM on and off for maybe four years now, sometimes hating it, because it made me feel like I was defusing a bomb that would suddenly obliterate what I had typed, and sometimes liking it, because it makes editing text so much easier. I finally decided I like it, not in the least because I've grown accustomed to it by my trial-and-error bouts with it. As I said, it's a modal editor. It has an Insert mode, which is the default of Notepad and others like it, and a Normal mode, which to its detractors is actually an Abnormal mode, because you get around text by pressing certain key combinations to move the cursor, type over words, and even issue commands to the underlying DOS (if you're using Windows). Actually, it's what you might call the Navigation and Editing mode, somewhat like in the old WordStar program, if anyone of you can remember that. To put it briefly, GViM allows you to write and edit text even without using the arrow keys and the mouse. Your hands don't have to leave the home row too often. So this is the type of program that would appeal to touch typists, of which, you may have guessed by now, I am one. If you're curious, you can read about ViM and GViM, which are free downloads, at its Web site: www.vim.org. It's main developer is Bram Moolenaar, who has an interesting article at his own Web site: "Seven Habits of Effective Editing." The Dvorak keyboard and GViM are just tools, and not everyone will like them, because ergonomics or no ergonomics, people just have different ways of doing the same things and will look for different tools with which to do them. Those items just happen to fit in with the way I like to work. In the meantime, I'm still grappling with these tools. But then, as I said, I have a lot of time on my hands. Isn't he Gorgias "In the 5th century BC, the Greek Sophists questioned the possibility of reliable and objective knowledge. Thus, a leading Sophist, Gorgias, argued that nothing really exists, that if anything did exist it could not be known, and that if knowledge were possible, it could not be communicated." That's from the "Epistemology" entry in the 2008 Microsoft Encarta. Gorgias is not someone I'd like to have to put up with at a bar. He's the type who'd give you a hangover before you even start getting drunk. But just for the sake of argument, which I hate getting into, especially when I'm trying to relax at my favorite watering hole, let's get Gorgias to run that line by me again. "I put it to you, my dear Alexander, that nothing really exists, that if anything does exist it can't be known, and that even if knowledge were possible, it could not be communicated." "And therefore, my dear Gorgias, you're not telling me anything that makes any sense, because you're not actually sitting right there, right now from across me, because you don't even exist in the first place. Which means as generous as I'm feeling right now, I'll have to dismiss you as an illusion and order one just more bottle of beer for myself. Of course, you may want to order your own nonexistent bottle from that nonexistent waiter over there, and pay him yourself with your nonexistent cash." "Uhm, that's actually my problem. I don't have any money." "Ay, as the already nonexistent Shakespeare once put it, there's the rub." Excuse me. I think I need a real drink in a real bar.