Is Caps Lock Dead?

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?"

No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key

[ClarkEvans]

especially useful in VIM.

Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key

[Anonymous Coward]

I find a drop of superglue under the key ensures its continued usefulness.

Caps Lock has another very important purpose

[commodoresloat]

YELLING!!!

Re:Caps Lock has another very important purpose

[Dashing Leech]

YOU'RE CRAZY!

Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key

[mirko]

Or in Quake : I use it mapped to the "Always Run" function.

Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key

[EvilMidnightBomber]

The problem with making ANY remapping changes to your keyboard is that in a programming environment where you frequently have to hop on other people's comps to "drive", you instantly take on the role of "goober who can't type" rather than "superhero debugger". It's bad enough there isn't universal standardization of the all-important backslash key, which 2/3 of the time is a std-sized key below enter and 1/3 of the time a 2x length above it.

Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key

[andy landy]

<pedant> That's not entirely correct. Old UNIX keyboards had Caps lock and left-ctrl the other way round. I still have a PC keyboard with this layout. </pedant>

That being said, the only use that I can think of for caps lock is to keep us sysadmins busy answering "Why doesn't my password work" queries!

Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key

[davids-world.com]

You might want to join the Anticapslock [anticapslock.com] community :-)

Well my roomate has this...

[ForestGrump]

escape and caps lock key switch.
http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~beyert/articles/es cclock.ht m

-Grump
bet you tim!

Swap caps lock and control

[ultrabot]

More useful than switching with escape is switching caps lock with Control.

You should have:

Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps"

In the InputDevice section for your keyboard (in XF86Config, of course).

Voila'! Ctrl assumes its rightful place on the keyboard. Ergonomic implications are massive.

Equivalent hack is available for NT too. It's done via registry, but I can't be bothered to google for it right now.

Re:Swap caps lock and control

[ForestGrump]

But the reason we have both swapped esc and caps lock is because caps lock is so rarely used, while esc is used alot in VI(changing modes) and chat boxes (close window)

i feel ctrl is fine the way it is (ctrl+x,c,v)
But i'll give caps/ctrl a try.

thanks
-Grump

Re:Swap caps lock and control

[jesup]

Ah. A vi user. If you're an Emacs user, having the capslock key mapped to control is the ONLY way to fly. As others have said, that's the One True Position for the control key. (Check Sun keyboards, for example.)

My "CapsLock" keys have the legend worn off of them, and one even has a groove from where my pinkie's fingernail hits it.

Re:Swap caps lock and control

[doom]

jesup wrote:

Ah. A vi user. If you're an Emacs user, having the capslock key mapped to control is the ONLY way to fly. As others have said, that's the One True Position for the control key.

That's the traditional position, I agree -- and I've never understood what the moron's were thinking who moved the standard control key location under the shift. But I'm an emacs user who's also using one of the kinesis contoured-model, programmable keyboards, and the Control and Alt keys are already very accessible under the thumbs (my numb-pinky-syndrome went away when I switched to the kinesis, I highly recommend them for heavy emacs abusers).

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.

Re:Swap caps lock and control

[1u3hr]

I've never understood what the moron's were thinking who moved the standard control key location under the shift.

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:

Ctrl-Z/X/C/V for Undo/Cut/Copy/Paste did not exist in the x86 world until IBM moved Ctrl out of the home row and Microsoft started moving its Mac applications to Windows. Through version 2.03, the applications bundled with Windows used Del for Cut, Ins for Paste, and F2 for Copy. Alt worked as it does today, and Ctrl sat there dead as a doornail. Check out

Windows: the official guide to Microsoft's operating environment copyright 1986 by Nancy Andrews (Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-914845-70-5). It wasn't enough to have a (minimally) consistent interface; just like Jobs's (minimally) consistent interface, it had to be as inconsistent as possible with any other system folks might come across.

I use it all the time

[ShieldW0lf]

There are all sorts of programming situations where having a caps lock key helps keep things readable. For example...

SELECT *
FROM tblWhatever a
INNER JOIN tblYaddaYadda b
ON a.ID = b.ID
WHERE b.foo = 1

Not to mention data entry work... lots of places that do data entry use all caps.

Oh, and did I mention that THIS IS A STUPID ARTICLE? SURELY THERE MUST BE SOMETHING EXCITING ENOUGH GOING ON IN THE WORLD THAT WE DON'T NEED TO PUT THIS CRAP ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE SITE?

Re:I use it all the time

[Atzanteol]

I've never understood the 'need' people have to capitalize SQL. It's not case sensitive. If one has a decent syntax highlighting editor, then the capital's don't help at all! I think having so many cap's in my code is fugly too. I've been doing SQL for 5 years or so, and I've gotten into many arguments with DBA's over this...

Re:I use it all the time

[Frobnicator]

I've never understood the 'need' people have to capitalize SQL. It's not case sensitive. If one has a decent syntax highlighting editor, then the capital's don't help at all!

It's a style thing. It's also the common style used almost everywhere.

You say it doesn't help if you have a syntax highlighting editor; you can't count on having a syntax highlighted editor all the time.

While I think there are benefits to it, many interns that I've worked with seem paralyzed if they don't have syntax highlighting. A few are paralized if they don't have auto-complete. If the code REQUIRES syntax highlighting to be understandable, clearly you need to adopt a different style.

If you don't have SQL syntax highlighting, the more complex the SQL statement is the more it benefits from the all-cap keywords. That in itself is enough to justify (for me) it's use. Since I compose my SQL statements in my C++ interface code, I don't have SQL syntax highlighting; the C++ editor highlights them all as strings. Using caps really helps readability, especially when the SQL statements are complex and require several lines to compose.

Re:Swap caps lock and control

[jrockway]

But real men SURELY don't have clippy tell them how to use the editor. [sourceforge.net]

I don't see that 'feature' in emacs ;)

Re:Well my roomate has this...

[EvanED]

Sounds dangerous... with the number of times I've hit caps by accident, I don't think I'd want to hit esc by accident...

Still use it sometimes..

[angst7]

Mostly for entering product keys.

Yes

[linuxpoweredtrekkie]

Caps Lock is EVIL!

I remapped my capslock into an extra control key months ago. I never type more than a couple of words in capitals, and can easily hold down the shift key.

Capslock is just a problem when you accidentally hit it when reading something you are keying in.

Re:Yes

[falzer]

Here's how I made capslock an extra control in Windows 2000/XP.

Go to this path in the registry editor:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Keyboard Layout

In that registry path, add a new binary value, like so:
Name: Scancode Map
Type: REG_BINARY
Data:
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
02 00 00 00 1D 00 3A 00
00 00 00 00

This required a reboot to take effect (for me, anyway).

Re:Yes

[ptbarnett]

Here's how I made capslock an extra control in Windows 2000/XP.

If you still want a caps-lock for some reason, you can swap them with this binary value:

00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
03 00 00 00 1D 00 3A 00
3A 00 1D 00 00 00 00 00

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.

Re:Yes

[ejdmoo]

It's much easier to download this:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details. aspx?Fa milyID=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&Displa yLang=en

Then that has a nice little thingy called remap.exe. Let's you remap any key to any other. :)

Re:Yes

[JPriest]

Fixed link [microsoft.com]
Download is for "Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit"

Re:Yes

[Audity]

For those too timid to enter binary codes into the windows registry, there's a program out there called KeyTweak [charter.net] for you. Thats for win2k/xp, nearly everyone else can head here [c2.com].

Re:Yes

[DanTilkin]

I find it humorous that in showing how to not have a caps lock key, you made a post that could have used the caps lock key.

Here's the official way of remapping keys:

[Futurepower(R)]

Here's the official way of remapping keys in Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server:

1) Download the Resource Kit Tools [microsoft.com].

2) Run Remapkey.exe to Remap the Windows Keyboard Layout anyway you want.

For some very strange reason, this sometimes does not work reliably in a DOS window when using a PS/2 to USB converter for the keyboard. Since the remapping is done at a fundamental level, the failure is difficult to understand.

Download .reg file here

[gad_zuki!]

Theres on here. [johnhaller.com]

I disabled mine long ago and haven't looked back.

Re:Yes

[Gabrill]

You guys are forgetting that the caps lock key is older than your silly programming languages. There was and still are uses for all caps sequences in many facets of typing. Caps are more easily readable on envelopes, some database and spreadsheet entries, titles of chapters, and many more writing applications. Sheesh. Newbies.

Re:Yes

[Frobnicator]

Caps are more easily readable on envelopes, some database and spreadsheet entries, titles of chapters, and many more writing applications.

I work with several different databases. All of our database data is stored in caps. Why? In decreasing order of significance:

• Postal Service Discount Requirements [usps.gov] - Unless you like spending lots of money on mailings, use one of the discount mail formats, such as automatable mail. Automatable mail means CASS cerification, which means using all caps. Otherwise, the best bet is using an all-caps, 8-18 point sans serif, uniform stroke width font, 3/4 to 3 point space between characters. We found that 10 or 12 point ariel fits the requirements. If you use bulk mailing and you don't fit the requirements, the mail can be thrown out, not returned, so you wouldn't know that your mixed-case address had problems.
• Compression size - Your compressor should notice that almost all the data are of about 30 values {0-9, the common A-Z values, space}, and a few other symbols for the database system. That tiny alphabet, and considering the rarity of certain alphabet letters, will make dynamic huffman VERY happy. Mixed case would at least double the size of the compressed alphabet, meaning larger backups. If you do backups (you do, don't you?) it helps. If you have to distribute the database to different sites, it really helps. In one example I encountered recently, the client had about 6 GB of compressed data and wanted to send it to all of their stores nightly. Each store is equipped with a dedicated high-speed line, but 6GB daily (over 9 hours on dedicated T1) is too much for a nightly transfer. After looking at their data, simply converting everything to caps let it compress to just over 1 GB of data (under 2 hours over a T1 network).
• Uniform - It's easier to search for names that some people like to have different capitalization rules on (Shrudili/ShruDili/ShruDiLi, MacKay/Mackay, etc) Yes, you can do a case insensitive match (you insensitive clod) but it takes more CPU work; That's bad when a batch run already takes a long time for simple case sensitive matches.
• Readability - It's much easier to read names and addresses on the screen when they aren't mixed case.

The first one will save you lots of money in mailing. If your company is in to saving money, then your mailing lists already do that. Compressability of data is *very* important for large-scale systems, and can have significant improvements with an ALL CAPS DATABASE. The last two just help reduce system load and operator error; both are good things to reduce.

frob

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

When would I need to do this? When sending email to an AOL user?

Re:Yes

[Hatta]

tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]' from the shell. gUip in vim to uppercase the current paragraph. Any decent text editor will have a similar feature.

OF COURSE IT SERVES A PURPOSE

[blue_adept]

how else are you supposed to shout?

Re:OF COURSE IT SERVES A PURPOSE

[abhisarda]

yeah, how else will those nigerian spammers get their message across that they have FORTY MILLION DOLLARS(40,000,000 $) AND ARE WILLING TO GIVE YOU A SHARE OF IT IF YOU ARE A NOOB.

Re:OF COURSE IT SERVES A PURPOSE

[randyest]

hold down shift?

Re:OF COURSE IT SERVES A PURPOSE

[isthisthingon]

Kidding (somewhat) aside, if you've ever read anthing in legalese there is ALWAYS at least one obligatory section that warrants being written in all caps.

I call this the:

"If you don't read anything else in this contract read this one,

or our hungry attack lawyers will eat you and your young
for lunch."

clause.

Yes.

[HenryKoren]

Naming convention in C++: Constants in ALL CAPS

Re:Yes.

[geoffspear]

And do you give your constants names so long that you really need to use your caps lock key instead of just using shift?

Re:Yes.

[Pooua]

Some people actually know how to type, which means they use all the fingers on both hands to reach the necessary keys. More to the point, it means that holding down the shift key with one finger while trying to touch-type puts an odd strain on the hand and is poor typing posture. The shift key should only be used for at most 3 letters in sequence, and probably should be avoided for more than a single capital letter in a word.

Re:Yes.

[Talking Goat]

And I suppose I'm not supposed to even slightly glance down at the keyboard at any time either? I got enough of this fascism in grade-school, further propagation via /. won't be necessary. Somehow, believe it or not, some of us have managed swimmingly. I think typing-nazi's belong in the same group with instructors at finishing schools and clerks at the DMV, which would also be the first group, coincidentally, against the wall...

Not everyone is a programer

[Dark Bard]

Writers and layout people use cap lock all the time. Most will use it from time to time in standard word processing. Computers aren't just for programers. Some of us use the software they write.

Re:Not everyone is a programer

[Slayk]

Legal docs have quite a few all-caps sections, I believe.

That's about all I notice when I skim over a license agreement, anyway.

Re:Not everyone is a programer

[FrostedWheat]

The Amiga had a Help key. I believe it was where the PC's Escape key is. Or it could be on the other side not sure, been a while. The thing that always amused me was the fact that for most programs, even Workbench, the help key did nothing. Not a thing.

They might as well have renamed it the 'RTFM' key.

Computer freeze check

[TheOtherAgentM]

I use Caps Lock to check if Windows has completely frozen up. If the light on my keyboard doesn't come on, it's time to do a hard reset.

Re:Computer freeze check

[Cerv]

But Num Lock and and Scroll Lock make Caps Lock redundant if that's all you ever use it for.

Re:Computer freeze check

[Lehk228]

no, it's a low level windows fault, when the keyboard drivers are no longer functioning it is windows which has crashed

We should keep capslock

[inode_buddha]

else it would be *very* discriminating against all those AOL'ers.

OMG!

[Ikari Gendou]

oF COURSE cAPSlOCK IS STILL USEFUL! iMAGINE ALL THE USERS OF THE WORLD NOT ABLE TO SEND LONG SHOUTING EMAILS IF cAPSlOCK WAS REMOVED! wHAT WOULD THEY DO THEN?! sTaRt UsInG aLt-ShIfT? tHE HORROR!

Re:OMG! (too much trouble)

[$$$$$exyGal]

The caps lock key *is* useful, but it is more trouble than it is worth. Do you know what the #1 tech support answer for everything is?:

"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.

Re:OMG! (too much trouble)

[Ieshan]

I'm pretty sure the #1 Tech Support answer for Everything is "Reboot", which is now called all sorts of high-tech things like "Power Cycle".

I hate being told to "Power Cycle". It must be someplace in the Comcast tech-support handbook. But it gives me a good chuckle.

For checking if system is dead

[ivansanchez]

Well, as I am using a mixture of Debian/Sid/Experimental and lots of unstable (and non-official) packages, my system freezes once in a while. However, pressing Caps Lock helps me check if the keyboard driver is still live (so that I can use the MagicSysRq Keys) or I must reboot by hand. Could use NumLock for that matter, but CapsLock is usually nearest to one of my hands. The truly useless key is ScrollLock, BTW...

What a silly question

[Overly Critical Guy]

Of course caps lock is necessary. It's necessary for whenever you want to type in all-caps without holding shift the whole time. I can think of dozens of examples of this. Hell, where I work, the blank fields on our contracts must be typed in all caps. I wrote a screenplay once, and you need caps all over the place. When I'm coding, I write some macro names in all-caps.

No, the caps lock shouldn't be removed or replaced. It's handy to have a key that allows you to toggle lower to upper caps so you don't have to hold shift.

Pointless Ask Slashdot question!

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What a silly question

[EvanED]

"Now, I'm not saying that it's NEVER used by ANYONE, because I'm sure someone will reply and tell me that it does some obscure function in some obscure program."

Only if you consider *nix an obscure program. Scroll lock in those (at least those that I've tried it in, which means a couple different flavors of Linux and FreeBSD) stops the screen from scrolling so you can read it. FreeBSD will even let you scroll up with the arrow keys so you can see text that has scrolled off the screen. It's actually quite useful. (For instance, you're maknig something with dependencies and a message comes up that you should actually read but it starts to compile the next thing, you can still read it. Also removes a lot of the benefit of piping stuff to more or less.) I would imagine there's a way to set this up under Linux too, but I haven't yet seen a distribution that has it working out of the box and I don't know how to configure it.

Re:What a silly question

[BJH]

Scroll lock works in the Linux console, but there's a better thing for stopping scrolling - Ctrl-S/Ctrl-Q, which works in any normal terminal. Shift-PageUp/Shift-PageDown move up and down through the buffer.

Re:What a silly question

[Soul-Burn666]

Microsoft excel. With no scroll lock, it moves the current selection cursor. With scroll lock, it moves the whole sheet (as if u used the scrollbar) and doesn't move the selection.

Re:What a silly question

[tlianza]

If you're going to get rid of a key, maybe scroll lock would be a better one. I don't think I've ever actually seen anyone use it for anything besides playing with the pretty lights.

I use it every day - it's a common shortcut key for KVM switches (Belkin, at least). Scroll Lock - Scroll Lock - Machine #.

That's still somewhat a testament to it's uselessness though. I'm fairly sure the KVM makers thought to themselves "we need a shortcut key on the keyboard... one that is almost never used for anything else..."

Now now young man

[kunudo]

Keep it as a tribute to the coders of old. It's like having a museum in your keyboard. You can even play with the exibit.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Now now young man

[prog-guru]

I use it often when working on hardware, to pause the boot process so I can read where my IRQs are going, what controller my drive is on, etc.

Used to be the way to terminate a BASIC program

[Xhad]

"CTRL-Break" was rather useful when programming in BASIC if you were like me as a kid and regularly made infinite loops by mistake. =)

Yes, it is

[Ice_Balrog]

Yes, Caps Lock is useless and annoying. Infact, I find it so annoying when I accidentally hit my Caps Lock that I added this to my xorg.conf (XF86Config for those still using XFree86):

Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps"

There are quite a few other things you can do with your Caps Lock key in Xorg/XF86, just Google for them.

Caps Lock? Who cares about Caps Lock?

[sycomonkey]

They still haven't even bothered to get rid of the Scroll Lock button yet... What makes you think Caps Lock is going away any time soon?

Re:Caps Lock? Who cares about Caps Lock?

[localroger]

My KVM switch uses Scroll Lock (hit twice within 1/2 second) to enable the other keys for switching machines. If we don't have some useless keys on the keyboard, devices like my KVM switch would have to hijack functions I actually use once in awhile, which would be annoying.

Re:Caps Lock? Who cares about Caps Lock?

[Burning1]

Because some of us use it on a regular basis.

My Belkin KVM switch uses syslog to change systems. Linux uses it to pause fast moving console output. BSD uses it to view the console history.

Replace it with a key labelled [help]

[mikael]

I am still amazed that after 20 years of the desktop PC, we still have to press the key labelled [F1] to get any type of GUI help, rather than having a key labelled [HELP], although Microsoft did find a way of squeezing in a key with the Windows logo.

Re:Replace it with a key labelled [help]

[moosesocks]

Apple has done this already.

It's right above the delete key in place of the infrequently used insert key.

Unlike the PC makers' latest trend of adding a bajillion buttons to the keyboards that will never be used, apple added four buttons above the numlock pad in place of the "lock" lights (which in place are located directly on their respective keys). The four (incredibly useful!) buttons are:
Volume Down
Volume Up
Mute
Eject Disc (less useful than other 3, especially if you have more than one optical drive. Still, since Mac OS requires a software dismount, it's necessary.

Oh yeah... did I mention that it has a USB hub in it? Why the hell are we still shipping PCs with 12-year-old PS/2 technology?

I just miss the power button. Even so, apple's relocated it to the monitor (another thing PC makers should have done years ago), which in my mind is the 'proper' place for the system's power button.

Re:Replace it with a key labelled [help]

[Gary Destruction]

Mice and keyboards are simple devices that would have nothing to gain by going to USB. The only possible advantage would on systems without IOAPIC's. You would gain extra IRQ's by using USB mice and keyboards.

Re:Replace it with a key labelled [help]

[runderwo]

Oh yeah... did I mention that it has a USB hub in it? Why the hell are we still shipping PCs with 12-year-old PS/2 technology?

Easy. Because USB is not a perfect replacement for PS/2 input devices.

• There is a large amount of latency on the USB bus as well as software latency incurred due to processing the USB packets. There is practically no wire latency with PS/2 and the protocol is dead simple to parse. You can create a little microcontroller project to interface almost any simple device to a PS/2 port. With USB, you need a separate ASIC to even begin to get anything done.
• USB controllers typically share interrupt levels with other PCI devices. On systems without an IO-APIC, this translates into increased software overhead on every interrupt, because the interrupt handler for every device sitting on that interrupt is invoked. Whereas with PS/2 devices, you have an IRQ reserved for the keyboard and an IRQ reserved for the mouse. Since they are edge triggered ISA interrupt lines, there is no possible way for them to be shared even if you wanted to. Therefore the correct interrupt handler (and ONLY the correct one) is invoked in response to a PS/2 event.

In short, there is no possible way on any but the fastest of current machines for a USB mouse to approximate the responsivity of a PS/2 port mouse being sampled at 200Hz (the maximum rate the port will tolerate).

USN

[mysterious_mark]

Actually, in the US Navy and other branches of the service radio messages all always in all caps. These were a pretty routine part of life on ship (for Officers / admin personnel etc) We would compose the messages on a PC w/ word processor, print hard copy, then have approved by CoC. Radio men would send them out encrpyed, hard copies were always kept for paper trail. A ship my send dozens or even hundreds of these a week, so the're quite common. There are a few who may need cap locks who aren't programmers. M

Character Codes

[Detritus]

Many of the old character codes, such as Baudot (5-bit) and the various 6-bit character codes, were upper-case only. The military used Baudot for many decades. Do they still use it for RTTY links?

Still Useful

[Detritus]

It's still useful for situations when you need to type something in all-caps with one hand. Take your mind out of the gutter.

I'm not a touch typist, and I often just use my right hand to type, leaving the other hand free for holding books, documentation, operating equipment, etc. Caps lock is useful when I have to type in hexadecimal constants, or source code that is all in upper-case (FORTRAN, Assembler).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

uControl nixes Caps Lock on Mac OS X

[Limited Vision]

uControl [gnufoo.org] is a nice little Mac OS X hack that disables/remaps Caps Lock and other modifier keys on PowerBooks.

I also used it to remap the "Enter" key to the right of the spacebar on my 15" TiBook to "Command" -- I have no clue why Apple thought that was a good idea, but uControl saved the day.

It's very well designed -- if it thinks there's going to be a conflict when booting into an upgraded OS it will disable itself (vs. barfing and causing a system panic...)

Happy Hacking

[yet another coward]

Use the Happy Hacking [yahoo.com] keyboard. It has no Caps Lock. Its Control key is in the right place.

Remap the key, keep the functionality.

[rusty0101]

Having a predelection towards holding onto and repairing old hardware, I have a couple of old typewriters. (Including ones where to type the number 1, you use the lowercase L key, because there is no '1' key.)

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

scraping the bottom of the barrel!

[bratgrrl]

This is one sad excuse of a story. Aren't there any leftover SCO blurbs to fill in?

Engineering Drawings

[pipingguy]

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.

COBOL isnt dead

[Tr0mBoNe-]

Someone said that COBOL was the only real language to use the lock, and that's almost true. But hey we can all forget FORTRAN, ADA, and even ASM or asembler was first written all in caps.

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??

I use it.

[mooredav]

In fact, I'm developing an application right now that requires Caps Lock.

Press CAPS LOCK to proceed.

Press SCROLL LOCK to cancel.

Please don't take my CAPS away from me!

I definitely use it.

[Icephreak1]

I actually include the capslock key in my touch typing. It's kinda hard juggling left and right shift when typing strings of capital letters.

- IP

The Military, for starters

[Akardam]

I'm a navy reservist, and although the Navy and the other branches of the armed forces are moving towards computerization of almost every aspect of information management, oft times you'll find that because of some arcane requirement for filling out a form or other type of data entry, you're required to use all caps. However, in many cases, the program that was written to replace forms with this requirement won't enforce the capitalization, much less actually automatically capitalize everything. You say it's dumb, I say it's dumb, and all the staff we have say it's dumb. But, in the mean time, they have to live with it, and having the caps lock key makes it all the more bearable.

Capslock is used all the time in the corp world.

[Viewsonic]

Especially in financial businesses (Banks etc) .. Printing out checks and certain forms will always be done in CAPS so as to not confuse the other parties. I find it a bit silly because one person hasn't used it, it must mean that no one else does. Sure, home users might not find much use out of it, but in the business world it is used everyday. And the business world makes up the majority of PC sales in the world.

Dear Slashdot

[Pan T. Hose]

Dear Slashdot,

Very recently, to my unimaginable surprise, I have noticed that I haven't used the tilde key for any purpose other than hitting it by accident. I know that once upon a time people were using the tilde key. They were using it like there was no tomorrow. I don't use it now, though, which makes me very sad. Does the tilde key serve any purpose any more? Does it still serve any purpose whatsoever? If not, will it ever serve a purpose? Will it ever make any sense? If not, should it be removed, moved, or replaced? If so, will we be able to see it in museum? What if later I find some use for this key, but it will have been gone long ago? What then? What will be the future of this little key? What, I ask?

Thank you very much, Slashdot, for your answer!

Sincerely,
Concerned reader.

P.S. I love reading Slashdot and especially the Ask Slashdot section, when people always ask so interesting questions! THANK YOU VERY MUCH! (Oh, God damn it! I used caps lock!)

How to defeat 13-year-old AOLers

[Schattenfreude]

My little brother used to sneak on my computer all the time before he got a decent laptop, and I'd always be annoyed to find the caps lock key on from whatever flaming/shouting/n00bing he was doing there. So one day I remapped caps lock to switch to a Cyrillic keyboard--it helps a lot with my Russian homework, and I never did find it enabled again after my brother had been using my computer.

No, but Reagan is.

[Sean Clifford]

No, but Reagan is.

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.

Keyboard update suggestions

[Rui del-Negro]

I think keyboards definitely need an update. More important than removing keys, though, is adding keys for some common tasks.

There are several keys that I think should be standard on all keyboards, not just to avoid having to use combinations, but mainly to avoid having a different combination in each program (ex., some programs use Ctrl+Z for undo, others use Alt+Backspace, etc.). Here's my list:

• Select - Hold down this key to select items or text. Shift+Select selects from the last selected element to the current one, Control+Select adds the current element to the selection. Alt+Select would invert the selection. It would be placed where Caps Lock currently is. Caps Lock would be moved to the space above the numeric pad, where the Caps Lock LED usually is (make the LED part of the key). The other two "lock" keys would also be moved here.
  
  
• Cut, Copy and Paste - Self-explanatory. Above Insert / Home / End.
  
  
• Undo and Redo - Also self-explanatory.. Above Cut, Copy and Paste
  
  
• Back and Forward - Above the left and right arrow keys. Useful for browsers, media players and wizards, can also work as "turn" keys for games, leaving the side arrows for strafe.
  
  
• Help - Where F1 currently is. All function keys would move right by 2 keys, leaving Help between Esc and F1, with a space on each side. Alternatively, put it next to Undo.
  
  
• Sleep - In the "System" section, near an edge of the keyboard (ex., top right), along with Print Screen and Pause / Break. Combined with Shift, Control and Alternate, this key could also be used for Standby / Hibernate / Shutdown.
  

Most of these keys could simply emulate the most common shotcuts (ex., Help = F1, Cut = Ctrl+X, etc.), so they would automatically be compatible with most existing programs.

I doubt this will happen anytime soon, though, since Microsoft is pretty much the only company with the power to dictate a "standard", and the fact that the only new keys to appear in several years are the "winkeys" shows that their idea of a "useful" key is one that has their logo on it, even if it's only used about once a month (or, in my case, not even that).

Also, one thing I'd like to see is a mouse where, instead of a scroll wheel (or two wheels), there was a mini-trackball, that could be used to scroll both vertically and horizontally. I'm surprised no-one has come up with this yet (at least I've never seen one).

RMN
~~~

backspace for lefthand

[Danny Rathjens]

For poor typists like myself, an extra backspace is always useful:

dkr@ur:~% cat .Xmodmap
remove Lock = Caps_Lock
keycode 66 = BackSpace

dkr@ur:~% grep modm .xinitrc
xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap

dkr@ur:~% cat .consolekeys
keycode 58 = Delete

dkr@ur:~% grep -C1 consol .tcshrc
if ( $TERM == "linux" ) then
loadkeys ~/.consolekeys
endif

Note that the keycode for the caps lock key is different in X than console.

Anyone remember

[Julian Morrison]

...the latching shift-lock that some early-80s home computers had? If you pressed it, it literally latched down until you pressed it again, and it behaved exactly like a held shift key. Now that would be infinitely more useful, both for the ability to physically feel it latch down (and thus avoid accidental pressing) and for the fact it affects more than just cap letters, it affects anything shifted.

Using Caps Lock *instead* of Shift!

[MooseGuy529]

I have a cousin who comes over to my house for holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc...), and he used to run a web page. I was showing him some stuff, and he went to go update the page. I noticed he was typing pretty slowly, especially around capitals, and then I looked down at the keyboard...

He was using Caps Lock twice for each capital letter!

Like instead of [SHIFT]H[/SHIFT]ello, world! he would do [CAPS LOCK/]H[CAPS LOCK/]ello, world!...

It was truly painful to watch. So, I told him, you shouldn't use the Caps Lock key like that, because that's what Shift is for! At the time, he got annoyed at me and said something like, I've already learned it this way, it's quicker for me...

Lo and behold, the next time he runs into me, he says thanks, I can type much faster now... it's now become a sort of joke between the two of us...

I can't figure out where he would learn that from, though... any ideas?

Capslock? What's that?

[jeff_brh]

Um, what's a capslock? [memowe.de]

Re:EASY IQ DETECTION

[Anonymous Coward]

If caps lock were gone, how would morons get their misdirected points across?

IT'S SPELLED MORANS, YOU DUMMY.

Re:for actually using a computer (writing document

[Ieshan]

Are you trying to say that you hit the caps key twice for every capital letter you need to type that's not in a big row of them? You really hit the caps key at the start of every sentence?

Yeesh, mate. Shift. SHIFT.

Re:for actually using a computer (writing document

[atarione]

MY BAD, I ADMIT I WAS OUT FOR A BIT LAST NIGHT, and I'm not in top form i indeed got mixed up with the SHIFT KEY.

I appologize to Slashdot and to the "Shift Key" for any Confusion on my part.... again my bad.

in a pinch caps lock might work as a "ANY" key???

Re:for actually using a computer (writing document

[colinramsay]

"Notice the capital "N" at the start of this sentence."

Yeah I see it. You're surely not suggesting that you used the caps lock key for that little "N" are you? If you are then not on is that a truly awful example of why caps lock is useful, it also shows that you have no idea of how to efficiently use your keyboard.

Re:for actually using a computer (writing document

[tftp]

What if he types with only one finger?

Re:SQL

[polyp2000]

I tend to do a similar thing, with the difference that its only the reserved sql words that i capitalise. To use your example; my variation would be ...

SELECT * FROM dork
WHERE dork = hotchicks!

This seems to be the general convention in my favorite mySQL [amazon.com] book.

nick ...

Re:Insert Key

[thorgil]

No way... I use the insert key daily...

mark text
Ctrl+Ins = Copy

Shift+ins = Paste.

Works in most programs on both windows and linux...
---

Re:It should be replaced...

[whiteranger99x]

All I know is that everytime I play Diablo 2 or another game, the Windows Key become the absolute BANE OF MY EXISTENCE! X(