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?"

Comments

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.

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.

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!

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

[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.

Re:Yes

[JPriest]

Fixed link
Download is for "Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit"

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.

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.

We should keep capslock

[inode_buddha]

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

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!

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.

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: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: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.

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

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

[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 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.

Happy Hacking

[yet another coward]

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

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: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(

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!)

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.

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?

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.

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).

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.

Capslock? What's that?

[jeff_brh]

Um, what's a capslock?