After years of abusing my little finger for using Ctrl & the RSI that goes with it, I tend to use alt/meta with my thumb more and more nowadays, for this I make it usable in insert mode also, this is probably one of the oldest bits of my .vimrc
It might not work the way you prefer using your favorite input method, but vim allows you to enter any utf-8 character, and even has mnemonic digraphs for many you are most likely to want. To get è, for example, in input mode just type <ctl>-k`e.
The point of my comment is that with an imap on <a-j>, you can't input the character ê because it will trigger the mapping. This includes option+i, e on OS X.
Comments
After years of abusing my little finger for using Ctrl & the RSI that goes with it, I tend to use alt/meta with my thumb more and more nowadays, for this I make it usable in insert mode also, this is probably one of the oldest bits of my .vimrc
Only problem with those imaps is that now you can't type ì, ë, ê, or è. Vim is pretty dumb about utf-8.
I'd also suggest using <C-o> instead of the <Esc>...i dance.
Edit: "The way [Vim] stores alt+letter in its input queue collides with UTF-8/Unicode handling" -- LeoNerd in freenode/#vim at 2013-04-15 15:22:29
I think I solved that problem quite elegantly :) However I still have a small TODO regarding printing from cygwin:
"Vim is pretty dumb about utf-8."
It might not work the way you prefer using your favorite input method, but vim allows you to enter any utf-8 character, and even has mnemonic digraphs for many you are most likely to want. To get è, for example, in input mode just type <ctl>-k`e.
Using the digraph will get around the insert-mode alt-key maps.
or `, delete, e if digraphs are activated (IIRC)
I code on a Macbook, and I actually use say... Option+i, e in order to get ê. That works inside Vim, too, I just found out.
Obviously not very helpful to people not on a Mac, but I don't have to go through Alt mappings at all.
The point of my comment is that with an imap on <a-j>, you can't input the character ê because it will trigger the mapping. This includes option+i, e on OS X.