How to make hjkl with shift more flexible?

Question

Currently I have the following maps:

nmap J 5j
nmap K 5k
nmap L 5l
nmap H 5h

This works great if I hit Shift j, it moves down for quick cursor movement. However if I let go of shift while holding j to go back to regular movement speed the cursor stops.

The same is true for if I am moving slowly by holding j then hit shift to accelerate. It just stops. Any work around for this?

I am using git bash in windows.

As much as holding down keys is an anti pattern, some mornings I am not up to thinking harder to use better movements.

Answer 1

Instead of remapping, you should consider the other options for moving the cursor around, i.e.

C-D        Move the cursor Down one page (controlled by the 'scroll' option)
C-U        Move the cursor Up one page (controlled by the 'scroll' option)
M          Move the cursor to the Middle line of the window
H          Move the cursor to the Highest line of the window
L          Move the cursor to the Lowest line of the window

Also, considering you know where you want to go (which is not the case all the time), take advantage of the /, ?, G, % commands:

/pattern   Search for the next pattern    
?pattern   Search for the previous pattern   
NG         Go to line N   (Ngg does the same)
N%         Go to the Nth percentage of the file.

If you are in a structured language, note the following commands that moves the cursor to the start/end of the following/previous function: ]m, ]M, [m, [M.

Doing some C/C++/... ? [#, ]# jumps to conditional macros (#if, #else, ...)

Moving across /* */ comments? [*, ]*, [/, ]/ are your friends.

You can also jump to the next/previous {}() with [{,[(, ]}, ]).

Soo, my point here is that you already have a lot of ways to move around in Vim (there's more than the little list I made). So I would suggest learning those ways before trying to remap core commands as j or k.

Answer 2

I would find it enormously frustrating to have the normal functions of H, J and L supplanted; those are "top of screen", "join line", and "bottom of screen" respectively.

I consider that re-mapping J is downright dangerous, because if the mapping fails (or you log into a new machine without your .vimrc), you wind up mangling the file.

As for why the auto-repeat stops when you press or release the shift key, that's a feature of the terminal (emulator), not of vi or vim.