War Declared on Caps Lock Key

pieterh writes "I've launched a campaign to rid the world of the caps lock key. Sure, there are more serious problems to solve but please, think of the children! How am I going to explain to my kids why some of the most valuable keyboard real estate is squatted by a large, useless key that above all you must not press! Our campaign mission is simple: to send a message to the computer industry to force it (by any means necessary) to retire the CAPS key. It's going to be a hard, long, and possibly very embarassing war on uppercase, but some things just need to be done. "

Comments

While you are at it.

[ErroneousBee]

Sort the rest of the keyboard out.

Insert and Caps lock need to be moved out of the way, so that you can use them, but you dont accidentally change a mode while going for another key. The Windows button can be moved too. I keep hitting it when using windows and defocusing the window Im working in. They have no effect in KDE so its not a bother there.

Backspace and delete need to be side by side.

Minus and plus need to be given the same level, as shifting to get a plus is not logical compared to minus.

Useless? Not at all!

[Lars Clausen]

My Caps Lock key is gainfully in use to change the keyboard layout between English and Danish. It's wonderful as it lights up an LED, so I can easily see the state I'm in, and it's very handily placed. Please don't take my Caps^H^H^H^HLayout Lock key away!

Used Extensively in Construction Industry

[SFBwian]

While I hardly use it outside of my employment, those of us in the construction industry use it all the time. If you've ever seen a Architectural, Structural, Civil, etc. drawing, it would be hard for you to find lowercase letters.

What will we have to do if caps lock goes away, press shift 5 times?

Re:Useful for Vi users

[wilper]

And we that prefer the superior editor can replace it with Ctrl, to ease the strain on the wrist.

I did this six years ago and have never looked back, I even do it on Windows-machines these days. There is a nice little util called ctrl2caps (or possibly caps2ctrl) that does this for you.

Get rid of Shift Instead?

[GoRK]

I knew a guy once who for a period of many months did not realize that the shift key in conjunction with alphabetic key on the keyboard made capital letters. He knew how to use the shift key - but he only used it for symbols and the like when a key was labelled for it. To type capital letters, he pressed CapsLock, typed the letter, then pressed CapsLock again. He never complained, and he had become very proficient with the technique by the time I showed him the alternative. I'm not sure I ever looked to see if he had changed his ways.

Re:Is this a joke?

[mrsbrisby]

Actually on the topic of C++... I think a petition for banning C++ forever is a much better idea.

I'll agree, unless someone can give me an example of what C++ is best suited for. I've tried every language that I can find at least twice, and I can't find anything that C++ is the best at, or even a reasonable middle-ground.

C is much easier to read, and if I want objects, Objective-C allows me to reuse my C code. At least then, I get an object oriented language. C++ is some weird class and template based language, that requires I either taxonimize everything, or degenerate into a slower and hard to read C.

I'm still unclear why we need four different casts, and I'm still unclear why it's a good idea to have two functions with the same name and data types (save the const or signed keywords, which aren't really supposed to modify the data type)- lest the evil C++ genies make my code call the wrong one.

I'm completely lost as to why it's a good idea making: if (a << 1) mean anything but to check if anything but the highest bit is set, or a[0] mean anything different than *a.

I can't figure out exactly how to control deallocation order when calling destructors during stack unwinds, and I can't figure out how to control allocation order before main().

I don't know why C++ insisted on being completely forwards and backwards incompatible with C, and adopt its name. It isn't a better C, it isn't even a logical extension of C.

I might be able to wrap my head around C++ better if I didn't know C, and expect C semantics, but damnit, that's awful hard to do when it's called C++.

So right now, I'll sign your petition, but if anyone comes up with an example of what C++ is best at, I'll have to retract my signature and simply sign the petition that demands C++ be called (!C)<C.