Vim (and recently neovim) has been my editor for around 14 years now! That's about seven hours in this editor every day, and I still find the mouse very convenient for a lot of the moves where the destination cannot be described with one or two keys. I like the idea of this plugin but I don't think it will be a big leap over the use of mouse!
OP and other commenters mentioned years of experience using Vim to support the claim that their usage of the mouse is likely to be necessary.
And while they might be right (or wrong), I'd love to see a good example that demonstrate that claim.
As to myself, I've been using Vim for over 10 years, yet I think it tells nothing of my proficiency with Vim. It's easy enough to become dangerous enough with Vim to surpass any past traditional editor one has used before that (excluding emacs) yet it's just as easy to let one's skills slowly plateau (as I'm surely been prone to over the years).
I rarely use a pointing device while in vim/tmux (an exception is when using a lot of splits which I probably should avoid using anyway).
btw the pointing device I'm using is a trackpad mounted on top of my Kinesis Advantage keyboard which means I don't have to take my palm off the keyboard to use the mouse (it is _not_ an argument to say that despite the short distance I almost never use the mouse in vim/tmux but just a side note and a setup that I recommend if you already own a Kinesis Advantage or a similar keyboard)
I've been using nvim for around 5 years for everything I do on a computer other than web browsing. It feels like I'm missing something here, but why would you ever need a mouse within your terminal? I don't recall never ever needing it :/
For me (Vim user for ~10 years, Kakoune user for ~3 years (iirc), and now Helix user for ~1yr), mouse just feels very natural to skimming. Scroll, scroll, jump, scroll, scroll, scroll, jump. etc
Something about jumping down pages via shortcuts just feels so clunky. I lose all visual sense of my position on the page.
I keep wanting an editor plugin to scroll the page down with a single keystroke. Ie give me the visual anchoring that a scroll wheel does, but with a single key press.
Either way generally i just tent to use my mouse when i'm lightly browsing. Skimming for some code, working through a thought, etc. Jumping down pages just snaps me outa my thought process a lot of the time, because i have no clue where i am, i gotta relearn my position; where my eyes are at. Likewise jumping half a page is a bit better, but still - that instant blink where the top half of the page is gone, the previous bottom is now the top, and the bottom is now entirely new.. it just feels too.. immediate.
Not OP, but I've been using vim for 20+ years and I get enormous utility out of the mouse wheel for scrolling - especially with a trackpoint.
I spend an enormous amount of time _reading_ code and I want to move up and down quite a lot, but C-U/C-D move too fast (losing mental context) and C-E/C-Y are too slow and RSI-inducing; the wheel very easily allows you to encode an additional "velocity" dimension that the keyboard simply doesn't have.
When reading code, the mouse also allows you to navigate reasonably effectively using only one hand, leaving the other hand free for sipping coffee and taking notes.
Have you tried having N lines of context with C-D and C-U? I also found that (half-)page jumps make me lose context, but having some lines on the top or bottom help me keep it.
It's not about necessity, it's about convenience. It could be argued that you don't need a mouse to navigate a web page either (there are VIM plugins for web browsers), but a mouse is much more user friendly and easier to use. Sure, you can practice for days with VIM and get really fast at selecting pieces of code in the screen and jumping around with just a few keystrokes... or you can use a mouse.
I like VIM, it is my favourite editor, but I can understand why some people just don't see the appeal. At least for me, the bottlenecks in productivity don't come with how fast I can type code.
I use the mouse all the time in tmux and nvim, especially for resizing splits, scrolling terminal output, selecting text from tmux, and navigating my nvim file browser. tmux actually has a right click menu that is nice to use occasionally.
I got stuck on a job in Dubai (Government client - they also had us work in trailers on-site - no remote access allowed) with a Remote Desktop jump host where the mouse didn't have any pass-through to my terminal session - which mean I had to work for 8 hours a day without any ability to select/copy/paste with a mouse. I had tmux-installed on the remote hosts and for the next three months, select/cut/copy/paste/resize panes/etc... were done without a mouse. Seven years later, I've never once used a mouse with tmux since then. https://github.com/schasse/tmux-jump is the equivalent plugin that lets you jump anywhere you want on the screen.
Funny, I use tmux all day long because it allows me to navigate out of vim without a mouse. So far I can handle most of my pane resizing needs with prefix + space bar. Otherwise I'll just launch a new window. Maybe I'm just allergic to the mouse.
You don't need a mouse, but it is by far the most ergonomic device we have for navigating to where your eyes are looking at on the screen. This is often useful for selecting text, usually in order to copy/paste or just to highlight.
Try playing some RTS games without a mouse if you want to understand why it's such a useful device in certain situations.
Text objects, especially those in neovim which are powered by treesitter, are much more precise than a mouse in a coding context. I can simply select a function, a block scope, a variable assignment, etc.
I use Emacs and occasionally paredit-mode for Lisp structured editing, so I know what you mean.
However, typing a few keys on the keyboard is still not as fast or as automatic as moving the mouse pointer to where your eyes are looking, IF your hand is already on the mouse (such as when scrolling around the code). Of course, if you have to move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse (such as when actively editing), the opposite is usually true.
I have seen vim gurus I absolutely bet can beat your mousing around every single time when it comes to text operations. I'm not saying I can but I am usually not in that big of a hurry when I'm coding, however I am not bad with navigating vi/evil-mode either.
Can the best vim gurus beat an average mouse user? I am certain they can.
Can they beat the best mouse+keyboard gurus? I very much doubt that.
Note again that I'm only talking about navigation - when you're actively editing, you're obviously going to lose too much time moving your hand between mouse and keyboard.
My biggest mouse use is copying text. Copying in vi is not that bad, but when selecting with the mouse, you don’t have to jump between copy and paste locations, which cuts the cursor navigation by more than half. Sort of like having dual cursors… which is an interesting idea, actually.
I use a mouse regularly for copying and pasting in the terminal (including in vim which I'm sure is sacrilege for some). I use vim almost exclusively as an editor, but I guess old habits die hard and I've always found highlighting and copying with the mouse, plus clicking and pasting to be more natural for me.
I also rely on it for copy pasting purposes but if you have :set number enabled you might, the numbers may get in your way.
This is where I find myself using :set invnumber that I have mapped to F2 so I can quickly get rid of them.
I use tmux to do cut and paste, but should I ever need something out of the terminal/browser into the other, or don’t feel like C-b] ‘ing something, the mouse is great.
Truth. This has been my experience as well but saying this would upset a lot of people.
People would equate the time it takes to press 4 keys vs moving the mouse but entirely forget the mental compute time of finding a pattern, recognition, selection of first 2 chars, etc. That for me takes more time than moving the mouse.
That's just because you haven't internalizes the keypresses so they're second nature. With enough practice most of these operations are practically instant, done before you've had time to move your hand over to the mouse.
Of course the keyword here is "practice". And just using Vim without putting effort into learning these movements doesn't make you good at them, so people using Vim for years/decades without making them second nature and thus prefering the mouse is not too surprising.
I've been using vim daily for many years and I still find mouse faster. Computing doesn't get faster beyond a certain limit. You still need to find and search text where you want to land. That takes 200ms more than I'd like. Pattern finding doesn't get faster beyond a certain point. You can't solve a jigsaw puzzle instantly after 10 years of experience. Pattern recognition and search requires finite time.
Do pianists think about where the keyboard is? the notes? they really just know from repetition. The same happens with text editors if you commit yourself to them like emacs or vim
Yes that happens, but I am not arguing about whether we get faster from repetition. I am saying that after a sustained practice and repetition, there exists a hard limit. Pianists cannot play at 100000 keys/minute.
I spend solid 6 hours a day on vim. Almost every day. I don't look at the keyboard or what I am typing. I don't even think about what I am typing.
However, searching for 2 letters is a constant time operation and cannot be optimized away with repetition. You still need to go search for a word that starts with "ha" if you're trying to moving to a word "hackernews". THAT takes time and mental compute. This is very different from not looking at keyboard keys or your argument about a pianist.
Whatever that search time is exceeds the ease of using a mouse (for me). Trust me, it is not about practice.
