De-arrowing my system...how easy it is?

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tim here.  I do know that some browsers have add-ons you can install
like vimium or tridactyl for Firefox that provide vi-like
keybindings.

However, I'm unaware of any system-wide solution and suspect it would
be a bit tedious.  I'd avoid using control, shift, or alt in any
permutation with a letter to get the arrow-keys because lots of
applications use alt+letter, control+letter, shift+letter, or
control+shift+letter/alt+shift+letter/control+alt+letter.  So if I
had the desire to try this, I'd suggest using your Mod4 (also known
as the Windows Logo key, the Super key, etc) since most applications
don't use this key.  Just about all of my window-manager key-bindings
are tied to this modifier key.

I don't know if you're in pure console or if you're using X.  It
might be a bit more difficult in the pure console, so I'd
investigating how to create a keyboard map that converts things like
Mod4+h to be the left arrow, Mod4+l to be the right arrow, etc.
However, this is somewhat system-dependent.  It looks like there's
some guidance here

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Linux_console/Keyboard_configuration

particularly in the "Creating a custom keymap" section.

If you're doing it in X, the same keymap idea might also work, but
your window-manager might allow you to do a couple one-off keys
without messing with keyboard maps, issuing a command like mapping
Mod4+h to execute

  xdotool key --clearmodifiers Left

It gets a little tricky if you want to do control+left or shift+left
so you'd have to handle each individually.

Hope this gives you some ideas,

-Tim

On February  8, 2022, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>      So, this is something I'm wondering.
> 
> Given I'm on my laptop currently, I'm wondering how easy it'd be to 
> shift the arrow keys function to, say, control+shift and maybe the
> vim key bindings so I don't have to take my hands entirely of the
> keyboard to do things that the arrow keys do, like neavigating a
> web page, selecting text, and so on?