Alternate keyboard layout for small keyboards?

[Nevuk]

Basically I'm stuck somewhere where all I have is a netbook that can honestly barely run tome in the first place, but the bigger issue is that it has no number pad and a touchpad mouse is a bit iffy to me as the primary form of movement. What I've been doing, but is tedious, is to just use the arrow keys and then use the mouse to move diagonally.

Any suggestions or ideas from others as to alternate keybindings? (I'm sure others have had this issue)

[The Revanchist]

I believe there is an option to change key bindings.

Open the menu, and I'm pretty sure it's an option of its own. There should be a part reserved for movement.

[Noel]

I'm old-fashioned enough to always use the traditional "roguelike" bindings. Works well with vi-trained fingers. YMMV.

Code: Select all

 Y  K  U
  \ | /
 H - - L
  / | \
 B  J  N

[Ritz]

Pardon me, Noel, I have a similar problem as the topic-starter. Could you please explain how exactly does your binding work? I can't quite figure out how it makes sense. Y-K-U for diagonal left up, straight up and diagonal right up? But that's somewhat counter-intuitivem considering "K" is in the row below Y and U, and is actually situated to the right from them... Or maybe we have different keyboards?

[Sianist]

its the very old school way of running roguelikes, from the time before support for numpads in Unix (IIRC) ... why exactly that setup? ... well ... all keys was allready keyed to two or three different things (Q being Quaff, eQuip and Quit, depending on use of ctrl-alt-shift) so it might very well have been those fitting least unintuitative :p

[Noel]

It harkens back to the Unix vi editor, which used H-J-K-L in normal (non-editing mode) as Left-Down-Up-Right cursor motion. The original roguelikes added the Y-U and B-N for diagonals.

Since I've been using vi for decades, and roguelikes for almost as long, my fingers are pre-wired for this layout...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi

(And thus ends the ancient history lesson... )

[Ritz]

Thank you for clarification, folks! Kinda puts me to shame - having played the original Rogue and a dozen of classic roguelikes, I only learn of this layout now. This seems very helpful, might take time to get used to, but surely beats mouse. Thanks.

[adamn]

I use a layout which is much more intuitive, IMO. I just translated the numpad keys over to the right side of the keyboard.

Code: Select all

7 8 9      o p [
4 5 6  ->  l ; '
1 2 3      , . /

Obviously some of those keys had functions which needed to be moved elsewhere, but I sorted it all out and it works quite nicely for me.

One thing to make sure you do: when you rebind the keys for movement, also rebind the keys for running. IE

Code: Select all

s7 s8 s9      so sp s[
s4    s6  ->  sl    s'
s1 s2 s3      s, s. s/