CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsvimkeyboard-layout
Johannes
Johannes

Reputation: 2992

how to type certain commands in vim, like CTRL-] ^Wc etc.. on a German Keyboard

I'm sitting here feeling silly - the vim help tells me to hit CTRL] (to follow links in the help) and I can't get it!? Same problem with ^Wc (close a split window)

I have a German keyboard and especially the CTRL] doesn't seem to work for me.

How do I do them?

Thanks for the help so far, seems to work except the CTRL]! Any idea how I can make it work?

Upvotes: 9

Views: 6036

Answers (6)

Friedrich
Friedrich

Reputation: 4692

As a non-US keyboard user, don't cry because some common ASCII characters are in convoluted places. Smile because you found some free keys Vim didn't think of using for anything.

Take advantage of those silly letters with dirt on them and use them in mappings, like this:

:noremap ä <C-]>

Upvotes: 2

KraftDurchBlumen
KraftDurchBlumen

Reputation: 176

If you're a Linux user with a German keyboard, and are open to re-learning the position of some brackets and slashes and such, you may also consider switching from QWERTZ to a more US-like keyboard layout. For example on SuSE Linux there is the EurKEY layout, and on Fedora Linux there is the "German (US)" or "de_us" layout.

These layouts are practically identical to the vim-friendly US layout, but you can still write all Umlauts (and ß) when combining with the "AltGr" key. For example, pressing AltGr+a prints the "ä" Umlaut.

Upvotes: 0

Paul Fisher
Paul Fisher

Reputation: 9666

First off, in this type of Help file, the ^ symbol indicates that you need to hit Ctrl with the key. ^Wc means to hit Ctrl+W, then c after releasing ^W. It looks like you might need to use Ctrl+AltGr+9 to get Ctrl+].

Secondly, Ctrl ("Control") should be equivalent to the Strg ("Steering"?) key on your German keyboard.

(Keyboard equivalents, for your reference. I imagine you can set up Vim to be friendlier to a German keyboard, but that exceeds my knowledge and Google-fu.)

Upvotes: 6

Stefan
Stefan

Reputation: 12260

In Vim you can use strg+click to follow a link as an alternative to ctrl+]. While this is not ideal it at least allows Vim beginners like me to navigate through the manual.

Upvotes: 0

Rook
Rook

Reputation: 62538

I have a Croatian keyboard and pretty much the same problems (due to the fact that I don't have, for example "]" on it). Have you thought about remapping those keys to something which you could use instead of Ctrl-] key.

For example, plain enter works nicely for me.

To do that, you just go to your "/vimfiles/ftplugin/" directory, and create a file called help.vim (if you're interested in using that key combination only in HELP kind of files). In it, type

nmap <buffer> <Enter> <C-]>
"for just following the link
nmap <buffer> <C-Enter> <C-w><C-]><C-w>T
"for following the help topic in a new split (often useful)

Upvotes: 6

Johannes
Johannes

Reputation: 2992

I think I found out myself. If I "pretend" to have an english keyboard and just click Ctr-+ (Ctr-"plus symbol") it seems to work. (to the left of "ü").

This is where the ] Symbol is on the English keyboard.

Make me wonder what else is mapped likethis? Anybody an idea?

Upvotes: 7

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