vi/vim tutorial for Dvorak

by Peter Hosey


About this document

I found this on digg: vi/vim Graphical Cheat Sheet & Tutorial. As of this writing, it has 1133 diggs.

Like all vi tutorials (and vi itself), it is designed for a QWERTY keyboard. I, on the other hand, use Dvorak. As I said in my comment on the digg page:

I like it, and will print it out. I want one for Dvorak, though…

Maybe I'll make one. Wouldn't be too hard.

I did, indeed, make one.


The original file was in SVG format. I do not have an SVG editor. There's Inkscape, but it requires X11, and my Adobe Illustrator tryout expired already (and I didn't like it, so I didn't buy it).

So I used vim instead. (Well, initially. Once the file got long, I switched to TextWrangler, a GUI text editor.) I wrote the file in PostScript.

First I ported it directly: a clone of the QWERTY version, simply ported to PostScript. Then I added a grayscale version. Then I added the Dvorak layout. Each (or both) of these can be selected using a variable(s) near the top of the PostScript file.

The font sizes are not exact — the placement in the original varied from one key to another (symptom of using a GUI to place them rather than typing in the numbers directly, I think). My version uses the same font size for nearly all the keys, with some fudge factors to reposition large characters. Only the fudged keys (10 of them) have a different size.


Downloads

vi_tutorial.ps
The PostScript source file. By default, it is set for the color Dvorak version.
vi_tutorial-Dvorak-Color.pdf
PDF file with the Dvorak layout in color.
vi_tutorial-Dvorak-Gray.pdf
PDF file with the Dvorak layout in grayscale.
vi_tutorial-QWERTY-Color.pdf
PDF file with the QWERTY layout in color.
vi_tutorial-QWERTY-Gray.pdf
PDF file with the QWERTY layout in grayscale.

2006-03-31 http://boredzo.org/vi_tutorial
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