Is It Time To Get Rid Of The Caps Lock Key? (medium.com) 658
"At its worst, it's a waste of precious space, an annoyance, a solution to a problem that doesn't exist any more," complains Daniel Colin James, a writer, developer, and product manager. In a recent Medium essay, he called the Caps Lock key "an unnecessary holdover from a time when typewriters were the bleeding edge of consumer technology" -- and even contacted the man who invented the Caps Lock key (Doug Kerr, who had been a Bell Labs telephone engineer in the 1960s):
I reached out to Doug about his invention, and he responded that while he still uses Caps Lock regularly, "we don't often today have a reason to type addresses in all caps, which was the context in which the need for the key first manifested itself to me."
I would go a step further, and say that most of us don't often have a reason to type anything in all caps today... [A] toggle with the same functionality could easily be activated in a number of different ways for those who really want to write things in all capital letters. (Say, for example, double tapping the Shift key, like how it already works on your phone.) Caps Lock is one of the largest keys on a modern keyboard, and it's in one of the best spots -- right next to the home row. It's taking up prime real estate, and it's not paying its rent any more.
Have you ever been in the middle of typing something, and then you get the uneasy feeling thaT YOU FLEW TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN AND NOW YOU HAVE TO REWRITE YOUR WORDS? You're not alone. Accidentally activating Caps Lock is such a relatable mistake that it's the introductory example for a research paper about accessibility issues with modern computer interfaces. Caps Lock is so frequently engaged unintentionally that password fields in software have to include a "Caps Lock is on" warning.
I've heard of people re-mapping their keyboards so the Caps Lock key becomes "Esc" or "Ctrl." But maybe it comes down to consumers. If you were shopping for a computer and were told that it shipped without a Caps Lock key -- would you be more or less likely to buy it?
Share your own thoughts in the comments. Is it time to get rid of the Caps Lock key?
I would go a step further, and say that most of us don't often have a reason to type anything in all caps today... [A] toggle with the same functionality could easily be activated in a number of different ways for those who really want to write things in all capital letters. (Say, for example, double tapping the Shift key, like how it already works on your phone.) Caps Lock is one of the largest keys on a modern keyboard, and it's in one of the best spots -- right next to the home row. It's taking up prime real estate, and it's not paying its rent any more.
Have you ever been in the middle of typing something, and then you get the uneasy feeling thaT YOU FLEW TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN AND NOW YOU HAVE TO REWRITE YOUR WORDS? You're not alone. Accidentally activating Caps Lock is such a relatable mistake that it's the introductory example for a research paper about accessibility issues with modern computer interfaces. Caps Lock is so frequently engaged unintentionally that password fields in software have to include a "Caps Lock is on" warning.
I've heard of people re-mapping their keyboards so the Caps Lock key becomes "Esc" or "Ctrl." But maybe it comes down to consumers. If you were shopping for a computer and were told that it shipped without a Caps Lock key -- would you be more or less likely to buy it?
Share your own thoughts in the comments. Is it time to get rid of the Caps Lock key?
I think it's time... (Score:5, Insightful)
... to get rid of medium.com.
Re:I think it's time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
No, just leave it. It's an easy criterion to filter out stuff that's not worth my time to read.
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I love Slashdot. It is wonderful to come here and see, that despite all the conflict and problems in the world, that the most popular story of the week is about the Caps-Lock key.
Anyway, the correct answer is that Caps-Lock should stay, specifically because it is so useless. It is a wonderful key that can be remapped by each individual. It is the essence of freedom and flexibility is an increasingly constrained world.
We need to stand together and defend our keyboards. They can oppress us and take our pr
Re: (Score:3)
a critical question if ever there was one...
Re: I think it's time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Numeric keypad never used? That's the part I use, especially when I use Excel, or anything where I need to type more than a single digit number. One can do it w/ one's right hand w/ just 2 fingers, and if it needs to be combined w/ letters, the left hand can be used there. I've tried keyboards w/o the numeric keypads, and they're only good when I don't have to type any numbers
Re: I think it's time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most laptops do not have a full numeric keyboard.
My Thinkpad does. I would have been willing to pay extra for it, but since it leaves "home row" slightly off-center the model with the keypad gets lower reviews, and so costs less than the one without it! But they won't discontinue it, because lots of professionals (like accountants) need it.
I rarely need to input a bunch of numbers. But when I do, that keypad is useful!
Also, it is true that the keys have a shorter throw than regular keys, but I don't really notice, they're very comfortable. Maybe spend a little more next time?
Re:I think it's time... (Score:4, Informative)
Fortunately, if you use a sane desktop environment like MATE, you have a plethora of choices for how to remap it (and various other keys) under System > Preferences > Hardware > Keyboard > Layouts > Options > Caps Lock Behavior. I count 16 built-in options, and if you really wanted, you could remap it any which way in /etc/default/keyboard using XKBOPTIONS.
My desktop environment may not have any eye candy (a feature), but it does allow me to focus on working how I want to work.
Re:I think it's time... I Second! (Score:5, Funny)
Some idiot that wants to solve a problem we don't have. What is so precious about the space the Caps Lock key, and why do my fingers need to learn a new layout because this idiot wants that real estate for some other useless key. Maybe for windows users we could replace it with a key that enters two backslashes because some other bunch of idiots used the universal escape character as the directory separator.
Simple answer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple answer... (Score:5, Insightful)
The caps lock key still has it's place, just not where it is currently located. It should be relocated to a place where its isn't so easy to hit. Then the ctrl key should be relocated there like god intended it to be.
Thirty years and I still have muscle memory of the ctrl key being in its proper place.
Switching Capslock and Control Keys (Score:3)
Switching Capslock, Control, and Alt Keys [pitt.edu]
SharpKeys by RandyRants [github.com]
How do I remap my keyboard with KeyTweak? [techrepublic.com]
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I remapped mine to an underscore key.
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People keep saying that Ctrl should be where Caps Lock is. The thing is, it's a combining modifier key like Shift. There's a reason Shift is on both sides of the keyboard - it's so that you can press Shift with one hand while pressing whatever thing you're shifting with the other. The same logic applies to Ctrl and Alt, which is exactly why there are two each, one on either side of the space bar, on a farily standard layout.
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That's an argument for not having the control key there though; not an argument in favor of caps lock, which is really just a now-useless (Yeah, yeah... I know ADA and COBOL are technically still things.) vestigial remnant. As one who favors vim over emacs I'd argue for putting the escape key there and exiling the caps lock ket off the the far upper-left hinterland that the escape key now occupies... assuming we keep it at all that is.
But even though you do have a good point about the multiple control, and
Re:Simple answer... Remap that puppy (Score:3)
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
; The hex data is in five groups of four bytes:
; 00,00,00,00,\ header version (always 00000000)
; 00,00,00,00,\ header flags (always 00000000)
; 04,00,00,00,\ # of entries (3 in this case) plus a NULL terminator
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See, this is what the "Year of Linux on the Desktop" people just don't get.
It's simplicity and usability reasons like this why Windows will always be superior on the desktop.
On my Linux maching running KDE, this process requires the confusing and non user friendly steps of:
Opening the "System Settings" app.
Going to Hardware->Input Devices->Keyboard
And under the "Advanced" tab check the "Caps Lock as Ctrl" box under "Ctrl Position."
Look how many steps that is and it involves opening this weird settings
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Many computers from the 80's had the Caps Lock key located on the right side of the keyboard, particularly to the right of the space bar. Even the original IBM computer didn't have the Caps Lock key where it is now -- some clone moved it.
I cut my teeth on an Amiga 1000. That machine had the Caps Lock and Ctrl key both crammed together above the left Shift. I guess they couldn't decide whether to copy the PC clone layout or everyone else's layout, so they ultimately made the stupidest compromise possible.
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NO. Leave it alone.
Precisely! Leave it where it is: don't wanna have to adjust my typing habits yet again. Plus there are times that I use the cap lock - like if I want to type a PART of a word in all-caps, it helps not having to keep pressing shift. On phone keyboards, there are 3 shift modes - UPPERCASE, lowercase and Mixedcase. But on keyboards, just leave it alone.
Plus not all of us still use Windows, so just leave it alone.
The purpose of the capslock key (Score:4, Insightful)
Is so the LED will light when you press it telling you that the USB port and keyboard is working, and you must be having a software problem when your computer is unresponsive to keyboard input.
But if you want to make it more useful why not switch it with scroll lock
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NO. Leave it alone.
Put anther way, it's not broke, it doesn't need fixing. It's a key that lives near my pinky. I use a keyboard because of the large number of buttons placed such that i can easily reach them with just my hands. That they have letters on them in a particular organization makes them useful for typing prose, but then a least 50% of the time I'm using the keyboard I'm not using that semantic at all. wasd for example, and caps lock is right there, ready for use.
Just stop dicking around with t
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I put on my robe and wizard hat.
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Re:Simple answer... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I don't program SQL, but for the languages I do program, I use a programmer's editor that color-codes keywords, as well as strings, comments etc. (It happens to be jEdit, but I'm sure lots of other editors do this.) Back in the 90s, I had a huge (by the standards of those days*) BW monitor, and I used to wonder what the big deal was about color. Once I got a (large) color monitor, and an editor that could color-code, I found out: very useful.
BTW, jEdit (and again, probably lots of other editors) allows y
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Sure I can.
IF EXISTS (SELECT p.* FROM pocket p WHERE p.owner = 'ShieldW0lf' AND p.spare_change > 4) THEN
INSERT INTO doug_reeds_mom (ass)
VALUES ('cock');
UPDATE pocket p
SET p.spare_change = p.spare_change - 5;
END IF;
Kill it or.. (Score:4, Funny)
.. replace it with something that truly fucks you up when you miss the A key.
Re:Kill it or.. (Score:4, Informative)
Google has an implementation. On one of their laptops (Chromebook or something -- it was at their site, ~6ya) the ex-Caps key stops whatever you're doing, loads a browser, goes to the obvious landing page for people who don't know how to use browser keywords (and DDG...). And, considering that I fell into the trap multiple times, the Caps key is nowhere near useless.
Re:Kill it or.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I enjoy using it as a compose key for easily inserting extended characters using easily remembered "mnemonics" -e.g. [compose][o][:] inserts an o-with-umlaut character, [compose][^][4] inserts an exponent-4, etc.
That's both very useful if you have any use extended characters, and really frigging confusing if you're not expecting it.
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.. replace it with something that truly fucks you up when you miss the A key.
Like the reset button?
Is it time to kill all the supid UX designers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time I see a stupid question like this one, this is the question I am going to ask back pointedly from now on.
Caps Lock is used by people doing real work. Look, UX people-- I fucking get it. You want to shake things up because you think it's hip and trendy and shit.
What you do not understand, is that there are whole lines of work where everything is supposed to be in all caps, all the time. Engineering blueprints are one of them. Leave the goddamn caps lock key alone.
Thank you.
Re: (Score:2)
Why are engineering blueprints supposed to be all caps?
Re:Is it time to kill all the supid UX designers? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's baked into the standards and practices documentation for most industries--
The origin comes about when people were doing blueprints by hand, and they wanted to minimize illegible handwriting and maximize consistent interpretation. The practice was retained when blueprints became digital, and was codified into the standards and practices documentation.
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it was really to distinguish between a couple of letters / numbers that often lost differentiating features on well handled paper. "l vs L so they don't look like 1"
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Think about the confusion between I and l, for example (no, they are not the same Ietter (see what I did there?)).
Re:Is it time to kill all the supid UX designers? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Translation: No justifiable reason.
Screw off. Cursive writing and lowercase letters are both relatively new forms of writing. Makes me laugh when religious folk claim that when the bible says god in lowercase it doesn’t mean the real God, when the original New Testament was ALL-CAPS because lowercase Greek hadn’t yet been invented.
Studies show that writing all-caps can, with just a bit of practice, be as fast and far more legible, than cursive or mixed case handwriting.
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Having spent so much time using a computer when i'm forced to write by hand i go to the fastest writing i know, and the one i practiced most: block caps. I'm not sure I can produce anything legible in any other font anymore, at least not quickly. But block caps sticks with me and I'm sure I don't see why anything else is "faster", at least unless i do it illegibly.
Noobs with modpoints (Score:5, Informative)
AutoCAPS [blogs.com]
Convert case [autodesk.com]
Moderation on Slashdot is inherently broken because the people best qualified to comment and the people best qualified to moderate are the same people.
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I'm okay with not letting people with extreme karma mod and post on the same story. I don't ever feel like my views suffer from a lack of visibility, and it's plenty easy to push my way to the top if I really want a soap-box. If anything, I feel that users like us have too much power vs. someone with a multi-million UID. I post plenty of AC comments for my more idiotic ideas that don't deserve a karma bonus.
On the other hand, I haven't had any mod points in 6 months, so I'm just going to keep running my mou
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"Your fault. Troll mod would have been avoided by including those links in the OP."
Victim blaming and scapegoating. If someone isn't qualified to moderate a conversation, they should exercise personal responsibility, and not do so. This only supports my point about moderation being broken by design. Slashdot is designed not to trust any of the users, so it totally squanders good will on the part of long-term responsible users.
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With a proper font, it adds clarity for short notes. It does reduce clarity for paragraphs though. It all goes back to hand drawing though.
What I frigging love is the fact that the iPad Pro “smart” keyboard re-maps not only the globe key but also caps lock to the alternative language. My alternate language is Thai, which makes many web pages unusable. The globe key needs to actually be an “alt” key so you can do a forward-delete... but NO!
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Why are engineering blueprints supposed to be all caps?
I've seen your kind before.
Someone asks a question on how to do something on a forum and someone like you cant understand why so then immediately starts hunting for "the reason why" instead of staying out of stuff you will later refuse to understand.
Re:Is it time to kill all the supid UX designers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is it time to kill all the supid UX designers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahahah, yes... like, your response is actually apt here. It's like "Oh no, the UX designers discovered we do $x here!".
Throngs of them rush in, start examining engineering blueprints look, how they should be modified. One claims a better font can be had, another that the caps should be italic too.
UX people are frankly, quite useless. They think they're artists, but it's like an artist designed a pen. Fuck off. The best design of a pen, is its functionality, not its form. If it isn't the best, easiest, most comfortable pen when sitting in your hand, it's a piece of utter and complete crap.
That stupid flare on the top, that keeps rubbing my hand when I use your horrid pen, UX person? That's crap. You're crap.
And that's how it is with most UX crap on browsers. Note Firefox. Firefox was the most configurable, user friendly browser out there. People love it, themed it, moved its menus around, on and on. Then the mental case UX people got involved, and what happened?
Firefox's UI decreased year over year, with all of these "helpful" changes to firefox. It used to be the most used browser, then they thought "Let's let the UX people help us!", and SCREWED FOREVER.
Do NOT let UX people do anything but sit at the utter most bottom of your corporate structure. Don't let them suggest anything about how to design your product. At best, only let them slap on a UI AFTER you're done. Make them work AROUND your product.
Because they have NO IDEA HOW TO DO ANYTHING.
Actually there's a good reason to care. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, many years ago I dabbled in calligraphy, so I can tell you why.
Lower case evolved from upper case over the centuries and it was considerably refined by Medieval copyists not only to be easier to write, which doesn't concern us today, but also to be easier to read, which still does.
Upper case letter have the same height and similar width which is just the thing if you're carving a line of inscription into a block of stone. Lower case letters have varying heights and more varying widths. This gives words on the page shape, which make them recognizable as a whole. When you see the word "the" written on the paper, your brain doesn't break it down to "t-h-e". It perceives the word as a whole.
Lower case letters are simply *more readable* which is why the older majuscule letter forms have been relegated to auxiliary roles like identifying proper nouns. Early typesetters kept the miniscule letter forms in the *lower movable type case*, where they were close at hand and put the less useful majuscules in the less convenient *upper type case*. This enhanced printer productivity at a time when lines of print were assembled by hand from individual letters.
Text that is entirely in upper case is prone to be to mis-read. I also did a little drafting -- back in the day when this was done with a drafting board, pencil, T-square and triangles. Writing in drafting is much more like carving an inscription than it is like handwriting; rather than take the time to acquire the kind of calligraphic perfection in letter spacing a medieval copyist would, you just did your text in evenly spaced upper case. However convenient this was for the draftsman, it actually produced a drawing that was more susceptible to being misread.
Re: (Score:3)
A great deal of text data must be standardized in block capitals for a variety of reasons, none of which has anything to do with how it looks.
Re:Is it time to kill all the supid UX designers? (Score:5, Interesting)
For those interested, theres a simple registry hack [wikihow.com] that will disable the Caps Lock key. As a bonus, that page also has instructions on disabling the equally annoying Insert key.
keep it but move it (Score:2)
Re:keep it but move it (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the shift lock, of course you would have it near shift.
If we're going to change something about the keyboard, it should be to ditch QWERTY.
If you press caps lock by accident, get a better keyboard, where the right side of the key is stepped down to make it harder to smash accidentally.
For my part, besides the occasional bit of text that has to be all caps for technical reasons, I use it for gaming. It toggles run in a lot of games, and the Caps lock light tells me when I've done that, so I'm pretty happy with it.
Since my caps lock key is stepped, I haven't hit caps lock accidentally in literally years. And this keyboard was bundled with a Dell originally, and I got it for five bucks at a yard sale. It has a hub and media buttons.
This is a non-problem, not looking for a solution.
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Every time I see a stupid question like this one, this is the question I am going to ask back pointedly from now on.
Caps Lock is used by people doing real work. Look, UX people-- I fucking get it. You want to shake things up because you think it's hip and trendy and shit.
What you do not understand, is that there are whole lines of work where everything is supposed to be in all caps, all the time. Engineering blueprints are one of them. Leave the goddamn caps lock key alone.
Thank you.
I'm all for improvements based on the way people work. However with 104 keys on a keyboard, what is the point of getting rid of one? If you want to propose arbitrarily assigning the key a different function in a user configurable way, then sure. If you want to propose new keys (ala windows key) then I'm listening. If you however want to eliminate something because you *think* (or rather thinking is what is lacking in this scenario) that people don't use it then I can only recommend that we chop off your bal
Re:Is it time to kill all the supid UX designers? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Out of the, literally, billions of keyboards out there, how many are being used by engineers who are making blueprints? What about all of the other specialist fields who need all caps? Combined? It's still a tiny portion of the total. Scroll lock gets a small amou
Re: Is it time to kill all the supid UX designers? (Score:4, Insightful)
The fonts used by CAD software often replace the lowercase letters with special symbols.
Your solution will do much more harm than good.
Considering that quality communication between engineers, builders, and inspectors is how you have people literally not get killed all the same time, making life harder for them so you can avoid hitting it on accidenthe seems a bit stupid.
But I do appreciate the feedback. I am fine with moving the key, but for fucks sake don't remove it.
... and postal codes (Score:3)
T5J0N5
shift letter number shift letter number shift letter number
Totally annoying without a caps lock key. H - E - double hockey sticks, even touch screen keyboards let you lock the shift with a long press.
My first thought was "slow news day for this one to make it", but then again here I am responding. Leave the fucking caps key alone.
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No, no, killing the UX designers is going too far.
But let's ban them from ever getting near a computer for the next 50 years.
Everyone using a computer benefits, and since the UX designers don't realize that computers can be used for practical things they aren't going to miss them.
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Now in some industries (Slashdot editors etc.) that would be useful.
Yes I do sometimes use the Caps Lock but would be just as happy with double tapping the Shift key.
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I have an idea... maybe since you know you are an ignorant twat, that you just go ahead and shut the fuck up?
Useful when you have only one hand (Score:5, Interesting)
I broke my hand and had to type with only one hand. Suddenly caps lock became very useful when I needed capital letters.
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Yes I do, among other reasons, because unlike Windows, Linux has sanely adujstable mouse keys.
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There are several available for X and also for KDE.
Re:Useful when you have only one hand (Score:4, Insightful)
But even though the thought if it went through your mind, you still disregarded it as unimportant, because you are a selfish cunt that only cares about themselves.
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...and you just proved you dont give a fuck about people with disabilities, since obviously the first thought *everyone had* (including you) when reading the post you replied to was one armed people and worse, even one fingered people. But even though the thought if it went through your mind, you still disregarded it as unimportant, because you are a selfish cunt that only cares about themselves.
Karma in the form of arthritis will get them. Payback might be a bitch, but karma can be a real whore.
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I have massive, healthy hands, so I can use either shift key to shift any alphanumeric character. But lots of people have neither, and can't necessarily shift every character with one hand even if they can use both shift keys. You ought to try thinking of things beyond your own fingertips sometime.
Or at least a mechanical lock (Score:2)
A mechanical lock would be fine as well, just a little plastic slider. And while we're at it, the F Lock too please.
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And while we're at it, the F Lock too please.
Heck no! A wireless Microsoft keyboard has such a switch, and it is a nuisance to have to slide it in order to use the media functions that reside on those function keys.
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Get a mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX switches.
Do you know of any good laptops with a Cherry keyboard, either included or aftermarket?
Why would you want to do that? (Score:2)
Accidentally hitting escape when trying to press a would be so much more annoying as on software (for instance spreadsheets and some dialog boxes) that would result in you losing ALL of your changes, not just having to retype a few words...
And just because the writer of TFA only uses their keyboard to argue with people on the internet I personally use it at work. As we have systems (both developer tools and end user software some of which is likely older and more stable than the author) that require string
first get rid off,... (Score:2)
How about first getting rid of the scroll-lock-key? (I know less people using that key than the caps-lock-key)
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Ctrl-A for Select All (Score:2)
That key sits right off to the side of the A ... easy to hit with the left pinky. Not sure what is the least bad option.
As caps-lock, accidentally hitting it so that aLL OF A sudden there are capitals can be annoying, and when doing something with vi where all the letter-commands are case-sensitive and sometimes really dissimilar, it gets even worse. And as noted, the problem of passwords where a common part of the design includes not showing what is being typed in.
Control isn't that much better: accidenti
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Oookay... but why would I ever want to type Control-A (except when using Screen)? Your particular use case is in your niche, not in mine. On the other hand, C macros by convention are all-caps.
Answer (Score:2)
ABSOLUTELY NOT.
YES (Score:2)
There already exist gaming keyboards which lack a caps lock key. Maybe just put the key under a molly guard, or make it shorter, or put it in the Corner of Shame next to scroll lock and print screen. It ought to be next to the other 'lock' keys anyways. Double-tapping shift is a software-specific solution that will of course not work universally, especially in old terminal software, DOS etc.
A software remappable key is the answer (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why don't you just hold down the letter that you want to have the accent for and have the system present you with a list of options? At least that's all I have to do on the Mac. It's very easy to do. For example, you type "th" and then hold down the "e" and you are presented with the options "è", "é", "ê", "ë"", "", "", and "" each with a number below. All you do is press the corresponding number and the accented letter appears. And no codes to remember.
Re:A software remappable key is the answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
No (Score:5, Informative)
Also, it's useful for people who use non-English keyboards (most of the planet), to get uppercase non-English symbols.
The thing about keyboards is that one can type fast because all the keys have a standardized placement. In today's keyboards, instead, we get keys moved around, randomly squashed to fit the space, status leds placed behind the machine, function keys (again, used by the kind of people who make use of ta keyboard) replaced by media shortcuts (which would be used by the kind of people who typically prefer another input method)...
Just leave things alone already, sometimes there is a value in conservation as much as there is in innovation.
/rant
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Replace it with a headphone jack! (Score:2)
Replace it with a headphone jack!
That would take courage.
Obviously, leave it alone.
Have always disabled it for the past 20 years (Score:2)
No, it's essential.. (Score:4, Funny)
Premised On A Lie (Score:5, Informative)
and even contacted the man who invented the Caps Lock key (Doug Kerr, who had been a Bell Labs telephone engineer in the 1960s):
I have in my possession a 1940s vintage manual typewriter, and it has a Caps Lock key, so either someone else invented a time machine to reach out to the then-future to steal it, Doug Kerr lied and claimed credit for common art, or medium.com lied about talking to someone about this.
At best, Kerr might have introduced it on card writers for the Labs. Perhaps a software driven one that did not also shift the digits row, as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Forgot to add this:
When I got to use my first X terminal at AT&T Research, my first act was to pry off the Caps Lock key top and relocate it to the top middle drawer on the desk, so I understand and also experience the annoyance with it. Nevertheless, ...
Compose (Score:2)
It should be the control key!! (Score:2)
In the vt terminal era it was the control key, I still remap my keyboard that way.
Its placement is the problem, not its existence (Score:2)
One of the least used button takes prime real estate, takes space for 2 or 3 buttons, and is surrounded by useful and frequent keys. This leads to accidental clicks. It should not be there. I remap it or remove it from my keyboards.
Plus, it encourages SCREAMING :) How often do you need to type more than 1-2-3 capital letters consecutively?
Also, Enter should be vertical, like on ISO keyboards, not horizontal, like on ACSII ones. It's easier to press with the right pinkie.
Umm.. Didn't google already do it? (Score:2)
Keep it so I can keep laughing... (Score:2)
... at the two finger typists I've seen who would have used caps-lock, the letter 'k', followed by another caps-lock to start the subject of this post. Some of them even know the shift key exists but seem not to care.
It's frickin hilarious to watch them move their hands so fast but type so slowly.
BACKSPACE button (Score:3, Informative)
There are a small handful of users who will remember Symbolics machines and their ilk (e.g., the TI Explorers) with a highly evolved keyboard that included SUPER and HYPER in addition to META (usually now known as "ALT") keys. Typing on them was a breeze because your hands didn't float around. One of the most enlightened features was that BACKSPACE was where the standard CAPS LOCK key is.
This positioning of BACKSPACE was in every way superior to the standard upper right corner position in current contemporary keyboards.
On some keyboards and systems, it is possible to remap CAPS LOCK into a BACKSPACE key, but in most I've encountered, CAPS LOCK being stateful (i.e., pressing it toggles the state of the keyboard) is so deeply embedded that it is impossible to circumvent.
If there is one change that everyone should ask for, more than swapping Fn and Ctrl, it is allowing CAPS LOCK to be remapped as a fully functional BACKSPACE. Trust me, once you try it, you will never go back!
Re:Yes, absolutely (Score:5, Funny)
Caps Lock is an irritant that has long outlived its usefulness. For every time I use Caps Lock intentionally, there are 50 unintentional activations.
So let's replace it with a power button.
Re: (Score:2)
Caps Lock is an irritant that has long outlived its usefulness. For every time I use Caps Lock intentionally, there are 50 unintentional activations.
So let's replace it with a power button.
Power button?? Replace it with a 5 second self destruction button.
Re: Kids don't know how to use shift (Score:2)
Thats probably because caps lock behaves more like the shift on mobile phones on which they learned to âoetypeâ.
Re: (Score:2)
If typing on a keyboard is a significant part of your job then you should be able to type with all your fingers while looking at the screen, not the keyboard.
Many typing chores require looking at some third option, like a source document, spreadsheet, or taking notes at a meeting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Bye bye CAPS LOCK (Score:3)
I use it probably a few times a week.
Re: (Score:2)