Is Caps Lock Dead? 1206
An anonymous reader asks "Recently I have noticed that I haven't used caps lock other for any purpose other than hitting it by accident. Once upon a time, COBOL was written in all caps, and other languages like BASIC and Fortran were not case sensitive. Capitals were the way to go for writing code. Does the caps lock key serve any purpose any more, and if not, should it be removed, moved, or replaced?"
Well my roomate has this... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~beyert/articles/e
-Grump
bet you tim!
Still use it sometimes.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Caps Lock? Who cares about Caps Lock? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not everyone is a programer (Score:5, Interesting)
That's about all I notice when I skim over a license agreement, anyway.
We still use it :) (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Swap caps lock and control (Score:4, Interesting)
i feel ctrl is fine the way it is (ctrl+x,c,v)
But i'll give caps/ctrl a try.
thanks
-Grump
Remap the key, keep the functionality. (Score:3, Interesting)
In most cases the 'Caps Lock' key takes two fingers to engage, and one to disengage. Mostly the two fingers are required because the mechinism is so disused that the key doesn't want to respond, but in any case it is a heavy key to use. To disengage the Caps Lock feature you hit the Shift key.
I would suggest that the Caps Lock key on it's own be treated as a Meta key, or Escape key, however if you do a 'Shift'-'Caps Lock' combination it engages the caps-lock, and if you hit and release 'Shift' again without another key (or perhaps with only a letter key) it drops the Caps Lock status.
Granted I suspect that most typists who learned on mechanical and early electric typewriters have adjusted to the computer keyboard, so you probably are not going to 'impress' anyone with the feature, but it would make sense as a result.
Just a thought....
-Rusty
Character Codes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
If you still want a caps-lock for some reason, you can swap them with this binary value:
It's the first thing I do when installing Windows on new systems. If a client gives me a computer for use during a project (even a short one), I make the same change and put it back before I leave on the last day.
However, I'm considering dropping the caps-lock key altogether and making both into control keys. When I swap them, most people have a lot of trouble using my keyboard -- which is either a problem or a feature, depending on your point of view.
Engineering Drawings (Score:5, Interesting)
95.84% of all engineering drawings (for bridges, airplanes, refineries, etc.) use all caps. Even though we textually shout at the fabricators/contruction guys, every now and then someone installs a checkvalve backwards or forgets to grout some 10,000# machinery.
I figure the original forced use of caps on these drawings is (was) to force the draftsmen to raise the writing instrument for each letter, so as to avoid the sloppy penmanship that usually accompanies cursive.
Insert Key (Score:2, Interesting)
COBOL isnt dead (Score:3, Interesting)
My univeristy still teaches a course in COBOL, its the first data processing course and it really was useful. Mainly because most major corperations that have mainframes still use COBOL for their data warehouses.
COBOL ain't dead... well... it may be. but it's still warm.
and where would we be without the all caps flame wars of the fark forums and irc??
Re:OMG! (too much trouble) (Score:4, Interesting)
"Ok sir, your password is not working? Ok then, have you tried turning off your caps lock? Yes sir, the caps lock key. That's a key on the left side of the middle of your keyboard. Try pressing it once and then typing in your password again. Working now? Very good sir, have a good day."
Productivity in the US may increase by 10% if we got rid of the stupid thing. If you *need* to type in all caps, pick a menu-option in your word processor or other application.
I definitely use it. (Score:3, Interesting)
- IP
Re:Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What a silly question (Score:3, Interesting)
SYSRQ KEY DOCUMENTATION v1.2 [freedom.org]
Good use for SysRq was introduced long time ago. And still it is *very* useful. Eg. in bleeding-edge 2.6.x kernels
without sysrq key I could have lost some important documents, I can't see a life without this key.
Perhaps you'd like another Windows Key (Score:3, Interesting)
I see no reason why something that is useful to me in my everyday work should be removed just because some idiots call tech support before checking CAPS LOCK when typing passwords.
You realize, of course, that if CAPS LOCK goes, they'll replace it with ANOTHER WINDOWS KEY. My boss at work has a keyboard designed by a demon- there are FOUR WINDOWS KEYS on it. There are the two in the "standard" places, and two more under Insert and Page Down. It's a damn minefield of Windows keys, each one waiting to steal input focus from the current application. Every time I use his keyboard I hit one by mistake. (He hates it too, but hasn't bothered to get a new one since his typing skills have adapted to the hostile keyboard environment.)
Productivity in the US may increase by 10% if we got rid of the stupid thing. If you *need* to type in all caps, pick a menu-option in your word processor or other application.
I doubt your productivity estimate, and I use CAPS LOCK in many different applications. I see no reason why I should have to go around figuring out how to set up macros and key bindings in every application I use just so an AOL call center in Bangalore can lower its call volume.
I might add that I used CAPS LOCK six times so far just while typing this post, and if I didn't have one my finger would be aching by now.
Re:Still use it sometimes.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Adobe Photoshop and Ilustrator (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well my roomate has this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key (Score:1, Interesting)
ASSEMBLY PROGRAMMING (Score:3, Interesting)
MOV AX, BX
ADD CX, DX
XOR DX, 0x64
mov ax, bx
add cx, dx
xor dx, 0x64
Maybe I just like shouting at the CPU :)
I also like doing my HTML tags in caps.
cAPSlOCK sHOULD rELEASE lIKE tYPRWRITERS (Score:2, Interesting)
Alas, when Windows came out, the TSR no longer worked, and I've been cUSSING aBOUT IT eVER sINCE.
No, but Reagan is. (Score:5, Interesting)
I use the hell out of caps lock; it's my "prone" key in FPS shooters. Others use it for radio, etc. Aside from games though, I don't use it overmuch.
Re:I use it all the time (Score:2, Interesting)
I think that's definately a good reason to get rid of caps lock.
Seriously, I have more trouble reading sql statements that are all caps'd than those written proper or all lower case.
Re:It should be replaced... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yea. I avoid keyboards with windows keys, which is to say I use old keyboards. But they still work, after 8 years, and I love to type on them. I have this old Wang keyboard from where my mother used to work, and it has all these extra keys across the top for when you were using the mainframe terminal emulator. They thing is a tank. It's heavy and it's very comfortable to use.
I go to my friends house from time to time and use his keyboards, which have windows keys. God, I was hitting them so much that I actually just popped them off the keyboard. I got a little tired of getting disconnected from my game because I tapped the wrong key.
I've never found the windows keys to be useful anyways, even when the computers at work have them. Lately, I've been seeing the windows keys get smaller and smaller, and even dissapear completely on many notebook computers. People just aren't using them.
Re:I use it all the time (Score:4, Interesting)
Disclaimers of Warranty and Fitness (Score:3, Interesting)
Ever look at those EULAs? That whole section that disclaims warranty and fitness for any purpose express, or implied. Those sections are always upper case because they must "stand out" in the agreement.
There are also significant parts of almost any legal document that "must" be typed in all-caps.
So lots of legal secretaries and the like would be much put out by the disapearance of the caps-lock key.
Plus, think about how hard it would make it for normal net-trolls to function on the internet if they had to learn to touch-type their troll-text with the off-hand for each keystroke pressing the shift key, sometimes for paragraphs at a time...
How could the religious extremeists and revisionist racists _function_ on the net without their caps-locks?
Re:Yes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Swap caps lock and control (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a few really big flaws in the kinesis layout though, one is the damn Caps Lock next to the A, the other is a tiny chicklet Escape key way up in left field. But the Kinesis layout is easy to re-program, so I tried a few different re-arrangements and evenutally settled on making the key next to A another Escape, just like mister Vim-User recommends.
Definitely useful for PHP (Score:2, Interesting)
$_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"] etc.
Long live caps lock I say.
backspace for lefthand (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yes (Score:3, Interesting)
It's IBM's fault! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Swap caps lock and control (Score:5, Interesting)
The (conspiracy) theory I've heard is that both Gates and Jobs were trying to kill off all the old DOS wordprocessors that used control keys extensively in the late 80s, particularly WordStar. So hardly any control keys were used in early Windows apps (mostly ALTs if anything), and Gates "encouraged" keyboard manufacturers to follow his layout that made Control less convenient. After the DOS apps were well and truly dead he allowed control keys to be used more. Perosonally I have CAPSLOCK and CONTROL swapped.
Here's an interesting article [google.com] excerpt:
Re:It should be replaced... (Score:2, Interesting)
i'm addicted to win-e to open explorer
and win-r to open run, plus the ever useful win-d to minimize everything
plus it's really nice when you combine it with a program that lets you define hotkeys
like my win-q to open explorer, win-i to open IE etc, never have to worry about conflicts with app hotkeys that way
but i'm just a keyboard junkie and hate using my mouse whenever possible
Re:variable names nad #defines (Score:2, Interesting)
Article is a troll? (Score:3, Interesting)
Your average keyboard nowadays is loaded with a gazillion of useless keys.
To start, there is F1 to F12, which are only used by, say, 20% of users.
How many times in the past 5 years have you used Scroll Lock? Couldn't 'print screen' and 'break' be on one key? (Oh wait, sys req is actually used by linux kernel debuggers, I forgot)
But that's just a start. What about the "Internet keyboards" of this age. Where I live, most (or all) shops don't sell non-Internet keyboards, so you're stuck with these keys:
E-mail, Shopping, Search, My Home, Media, Volume (+/-), Mute, Play, Stop, Previous, Next, Favorites, Community, My Sites, Finance, Sleep, Back, Go.
Oh, I almost forgot the Windows key and the 'right-mouse-button' key, which are completely unnecessary for Windows, and a complete waste for other OS-es.
So you're complaining about Caps Lock, a key that has been on every keyboard for ages, and that most people use, although infrequently, and more so for documents than for source code nowadays, while nowadays there are over 20 completely useless keys that are forced on you by keyboard producers like Logitech and Microsoft??
Get serious.
- Erwin
Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key (Score:3, Interesting)
I've mapped it to Enter instead, for a purely ergonomic reason: On the Finnish keyboard, the keys have been rearranged to allow for the letters ä, ö and å, and there are two keys between my right little finger and the enter key (from my right hand: j, k, l, ö, ä, ', Enter). When I started using IRC more, my right little finger started getting really sore from hitting enter. I added the Caps Lock enter, and the hurting stopped immediately. Now I'm not even sure which one I use more - it just comes naturally.
Of course, my big brother complains about this every time he uses my computer (not very often). He has his Caps Lock mapped to Control, and every time he tries to cancel some command using Ctrl-C, something awful happens...
Double-tapping the shift key (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key (Score:2, Interesting)
The absolute worst is ~ for home, since under windows I had to type ALT+NUMPAD1,2,3 at lest on old ones (ASCII code) and you know those 8-letterized filenames under DOS. Now under linux AltGr+4 is much easier (it works under Windows but it's treated as an accent i.e. you need to type a space after it, for example typing ~n makes ñ) but still, it's annoying when you type # or ½ due to missing the 4.
Spanish keybords are, IMHO, a complete mess symbols-wise. What's more important, or #? Well they've got mapped to shift+3 and # mapped to altgr+3.
I just learned that AltGr+7,8,9,0 is {[]}. They're usually AltGr+the keys left to Enter (so there are 2 possible ways of typing them). What a mess. '=' is also wretched, you need shift. Backticks are a grave-accent and thus need space.
I'd remap them, but I'm too used to standard keyboard and I wouldn't be able to type on others, let aside the fact that I don't know how to type without looking every once in a while, and having keys do something other than printed would be a mess.
Anyone remember (Score:4, Interesting)
Scroll Lock and industrial design (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I use it all the time (Score:2, Interesting)
Now that that's done, see my follow-up post where the formatting of my example query showed up properly.
I used to have this same argument regarding HTML. XHTML won that one for me.