Hi, I want to add something to my last mail. I think the 'modes' of modal editing are not the problem when implementing modal-editing in emacs - emacs does already have modes (minor- and major-modes) which can be enabled and disabled. The only problem are the keymaps. The emacs-keymaps don't provide an easy way to parse commands as desired (as vim does). So the only important part to be implemented IS the parsing of input commands. I pushed some new patches to vim-mode's repository which move (almost) all vim-specific components out of vim-keys.el and vim-nodes.el to vim-vim.el. Now the first both files could already provide a simple framework to get vim-like keymaps. The main point is that it's now possible to call a function when an arbitrary node of the keymap-tree is traversed, i.e. not only on the leaf nodes but also on the inner nodes. Vim-specific parts of commands, like counts or registers, can be easily implemented by tagging an appropriate function to the nodes of the keymaps (by this approach it is of course possible to manipulate and redirect the parsing process on inner nodes). Everything else, like the composition of commands and motions, the implementation of commands and even activation and deactivation of modes is not part of the keymap-stuff. Frank