Lev Lvovsky wrote:
On Oct 16, 2006, at 10:31 AM, Charles E Campbell Jr wrote:
Seems a reasonable choice, to me. Any choice would be arbitrary.
Now, to turn it off: don't use insert. Use append.
if you mean 'a' as opposed to 'i' for the modes, it still does the same
thing in my version.
thanks,
-lev
When you hit 'a' in Normal mode, the cursor moves one character right while
going into Insert mode, so that compensates for the leftwards move which
happens on <Esc> in Insert mode.
In Normal mode, the cursor must lie on a character (assuming you're not using
'virtualedit'). In Insert mode, the cursor can be either on a character, or
just after the last character on a line (in gvim, the Insert-mode cursor is
normally a thin vertical line along the left side of its character cell, but
it must still be regarded as being "on" a character cell). So there are one
more possible cursor positions on each line in Insert mode than in Normal
mode. The choice which (IIUC) the authors of Vi (ancestor to Vim) originally
made, was to have the cursor move back by one character when going from Insert
to Normal, except when at the left margin. The alternative would have been to
have the cursor stay put, except when at the end of the line. I suppose either
choice had arguments in its favour, but we're stuck with the choice that was
made. Once you're accustomed to it, it stops chafing. One argument in favour
of the choice that was made, is that when typing in new text you're usually at
the end of the line (pushing the end of the line with the text you're adding),
so it would have been awkward to have that be the exception.
Best regards,
Tony.
