Ask Slashdot: Why Is the Caps Lock Key Still So Prominent On Keyboards?

Esther Schindler writes: The developers at .io are into tracking things, I guess. In any case, a few weeks back they decided to track team performance in terms of keyboard and mouse activity during the working day. They installed a simple Chrome plugin on every Macbook and collected some statistics. For instance, developers have fewer keypresses than editors and managers—around 4k every day. Managers type more than 23k characters per day. And so on. Some pretty neat statistics.

But the piece that jumped out at me was this: "What's curious—the least popular keys are Capslock and Right Mouse Button. Somewhere around 0.1% of all keypresses together. It's time to make some changes to keyboards." I've been whining about this for years. Why is it that the least-used key on my keyboard is not just in a prominent position, but also bigger than most other keys? I can I invest in a real alternate keyboard with a different layout (my husband's a big fan of the Kinesis keyboards, initially to cope with carpal tunnel). But surely it's time to re-visit the standard key layout? What keys would you eliminate or re-arrange?

Comments

Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The Capslock key inherited the position occupied by the Shift-Lock key. Some keyboards still mark it as shift-lock. In the old mechanical typewriters, the shift lock actually moved the entire framework holding the rack of all the levers that held the letters. It required considerable force to push.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[T.E.D.]

The Capslock key inherited the position occupied by the Shift-Lock key. Some keyboards still mark it as shift-lock. In the old mechanical typewriters, the shift lock actually moved the entire framework holding the rack of all the levers that held the letters. It required considerable force to push.

...and you could tell from the look and feel of the shift key that it was down. And using the shift key automatically unlocked the shift lock (on many keyboards at least).

If you really want to have that key, it probably ought to go back to that: some kind of mechanical lock on the shift key. Perhaps a smallish button actually physically on one corner of the left shift key.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[SoftwareArtist]

I wish it still behaved as shift-lock: affecting all characters, not just letters. When I use caps lock, it's almost always because I'm typing an environment variable or #defined constant. And that means I'm going to be typing lots of _ characters. If caps lock behaved like shift lock, I wouldn't have to press shift for every one of them.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[mattventura]

And then most early computer and terminal keyboards put something more useful there (usually Ctrl). Somehow it later got reverted. If only this study had been done somewhere around 1985.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[SEE]

It was reverted because, as computers started systematically replacing the typewriter in businesses (instead of being a specialist machine, like terminals), secretary-typists and the typists in corporate typing pools complained about the location of the Caps Lock key not being where they were used to it. Keyboards for computers intended for general business use accordingly swapped over, since the people who typed the most and had the strongest opinions on keyboards in the early 1980s wanted it that way.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[squiggleslash]

Alas constants tend to also have a lot of digits in them, so you'd win on the underscores, but lose for the other non-alphas.

Maybe it's time underscore was its own key anyway...

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[Barefoot Monkey]

It might be useful to have capslock switch the minus and underscore iff the cursor is in the middle of a word. I'd like to see how that works out in practice. In fact, I've been wanting to try my hand at making Sublime Text Editor plugins for a while and a small tweak like this might be just the thing for a first project :)

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[unrtst]

Maybe it's time underscore was its own key anyway...

How about where the capslock is now

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[xaxa]

You could tweak an existing keyboard layout definition to do this -- it's easy on Linux, and there is (or at least used to be) a tool to do it for Windows.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[turning in circles]

I think this is where we get to the information in the summary that managers type almost 6x as many characters as programmers, and they like to feel like they're in charge, so dream on, programmers, the managers, who mimic the secretaries of yesteryear in their lack of a need for control keys or other useful keys, will keep things as they''ve always been.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

since the people who typed the most and had the strongest opinions on keyboards...

...should have gotten an APL keyboard. ;) Or a Knight keyboard at least.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[bdh]

www.autohotkey.com

For those interested in making the shift key act like a typewriter, I use this snippet. Double tap (within 500ms) either shift key, and it enables shift lock; a single tap disables it:

Shift::
      if A_PriorHotkey = Shift
      {
            if A_TimeSincePriorHotkey 500
            {
                  SetCapsLockState, on
                  return
            }
      }

      SetCapsLockState, on
      keywait, CapsLock
      SetCapsLockState, off
return

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[IcyWolfy]

This would be horrible for anyone using Swiss German Keyboard Layout.
CAPS is a separate keyboard state.
CAPS ON, Key !== SHIFT+Key

ü = ü
Shift-ü = è
CAPS ON, ü = Ü
CAPS ON, Shift-ü = È

Because the relevant part of the layout:
      o p ü
      k l ö ä $

With Shift
    O P è !
    K L é à £

Caps Lock
      O P Ü
      K L Ö Ä $

Caps+SHIFT
      O P È !
      K L É À $

Thus, CAPS-ON + key != Shift + key.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[TeknoHog]

My keyboard has two Ctrl keys in a rather symmetric orientation, and I like them that way, much like the two Shift keys. If the left Ctrl were in the place of Caps Lock, then its right counterpart would have to replace Enter.

It's not that I like having a Caps Lock around doing nothing, but it's not exactly a great place for a modifier which generally comes in symmetric pairs.

Re: Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[tommyjcarpenter]

I just asked my wife, a user, if she ever uses the CAPS key. She works for the U.S. Government. She states that all government software forms in their office are filled out in CAPS because a lot of judges and elder officials who review the documents are older and can't read normal text as well as CAPS. Obviously this is a larger, systemic problem, but to my wife who cannot control these policies, the CAPS key being in a prominent position helps her greatly. Very interesting POV!

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[Darinbob]

Hmm, do they get used symmetrically? The right shift key for me is used but not that often, whereas the other keys like Windows (ugh), Alt, Command, etc, are really rarely touched and never on the right side (though I never need AltGr).

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[westlake]

secretary-typists and the typists in corporate typing pools complained about the location of the Caps Lock key not being where they were used to it. Keyboards for computers intended for general business use accordingly swapped over, since the people who typed the most and had the strongest opinions on keyboards in the early 1980s wanted it that way.

and I bet the same could be said for full-time clerical workers in 2015. changes in software and workflow in the office can be glacial.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[davester666]

How the fuck does a Chrome Extension gain access to EVERY keystroke on a Mac? It's not like managers and developers do everything in their browser.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[rtb61]

The secretaries were also the reason for QWERTY. I've worked with a bunch of businesses and it was always suprising how many decisions the bosses secrety made, often the pretty the secretary the more power she had. Still why has QWERTY lingered on and for fuck sake why are we teaching to children whilst teaching them alphabetical order at the same time.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[adolf]

Selective shift-lock excluding the numeric keypad?

#IT_WOULD_MAKE_THIS_EASY3513$

I know, I know: There's only so much a mechanical typewriter can accomplish.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[Tomahawk]

From the article, 4k keypresses per day for developers Vs 23k for managers... managers are less likely to use the _ key, so why make that prominent?! The majority of keyboard users don't use _ much.

It's hard to know what to put in place of such a large key. I'd be inclined to suggest, maybe, a local currency key (that would change behaviour based on the current locale). It's awkwark hitting AltGr-4 to get a € symbol, for example (and US keyboards don't have an AltGr key!) - especially considering that Shift-4 gives $, and I typically use shift with my left little finger (rarely my right), and AltGr is on the right, and beside the space key, so it's normally right-thumb-on-AltGr. I also have less need for $ and £.

So the £, €, $, the yen symbol, etc, could be placed next to the A key (or maybe one place to the left again) on all keyboard.

Still not needing such a big key, there's still space for another normal key here (or maybe just leave caps-lock there, just smaller, as the vast majority of use have muscle memory for its location - moving it somewhere else would cause confusing for too many people - I'd be all for making it smaller, though)

If we were to move it, I might suggest an alternative shift for special characters, especially for non-English letters, like é í á, etc. AltGr does most of them, but again, it's not a little-finger key, so it breaks the norm of typing.

Re: Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[Tomahawk]

On a UK and Irish layouts, certainly, and likely others too, the # key already has a more prominent space on the home row. For US users, it's Shift-3. For UK and Irish, Shift-3 is the pound symbol (as in £). # ("hash" for us, or "sharp", or "number" -- never "pound" or "octothorp") is a little-finger key located beside the bottom half of the enter key (which has a different shape for us than on US keyboards)

My home row is
capslock ASDFGHJKL;'# bottom_of_enter_key
(the 3 keys after L with shift are :@~ )

Putting it where caps-lock is now would be counter-productive for all most non-US keyboard users.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[Tomahawk]

And the debate about QWERTY keyboards will go on and on and on and on... and the keyboard default layout will never change because at this stage almost everyone in the (developed, at least) world uses a keyboard in that layout. It's too late at this point to change it.

I, for one, don't want to change. I've been typing on the QWERTY keyboard for over 30 years, and I don't want to have to relearn how to type for nor real valid reason. I find it hard enough switching between US and UK keyboard layouts, and that's only a few keys different. (I actually ended up buying a new keyboard for my US-bought laptop just because of those few key (in both senses of the word) differences.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[AmiMoJo]

I've actually done that on my machines. There is a Windows app called KbdEdit that lets you make your own keyboard layouts. I changed Caps Lock to an underscore character, and added a lot of alt-gr alternatives for useful symbols such as:

- Pi
- o and u with macrons
- Yen symbol on UK layouts and Pound symbol on Japanese layouts
- ohm symbol
- right and left arrows (you can type them with the Japanese IME but not in English)
- less/greater or equal to symbols
- delta and sigma symbols
- degree symbol
- multiplication symbol

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[Tomahawk]

By right, when touch typing, if you need a modifier key, you use the little finger of the opposite hand to press it. Hence, CTRL-M should be left-control and M. CTRL-C should be right-control and C. (same with shift).

These days, this isn't important (apart from to avoid stretching your fingers and straining your hand), but in the days of typewriters it was. (Well, apart from the CTRL keys... :) )

I hate when laptop manufacturers place the Fn key in the bottom left (to the left of the CTRL key) as I always hit it instead of the CTRL key. No matter how good the laptop, if the Fn key is in this wrong position, I won't buy it. (Some BIOSes will allow you to remap the CTRL and Fn keys, which helps).

Re: Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[Alioth]

I'd have to question that (not that she has to do it or the reasons she was told, but the supposed reality that elders can't read normal text as well as caps). One of the pieces of research that was done here in the 1950s resulted in motorway road signs in the UK being in mixed case rather than all caps - it caused howls of anguish from old-timers resistant to change - but the thing is words with lower case text have more of a shape - for instance "Manchester" can be resolved as the word "Manchester" much faster than "MANCHESTER" - it was found you could read the mixed case before you could even resolve all the letters because you could recognise the shape of the word, given that lower case text has more features like ascenders and descenders. Hence all UK road signs ever since have been in mixed case.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[Eunuchswear]

I wish it still behaved as shift-lock: affecting all characters, not just letters. When I use caps lock, it's almost always because I'm typing an environment variable or #defined constant. And that means I'm going to be typing lots of _ characters. If caps lock behaved like shift lock, I wouldn't have to press shift for every one of them.

Get a French AZERTY keyboard.

(Except that you use shift-lock to get numbers, by default unshifted is symbols).

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[Big Hairy Ian]

iF only we could mAKE IT As hard to press

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[tepples]

Good luck fitting any sort of numeric keypad on a compact laptop.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[doccus]

Hey that's right.. I had one of those really old typewriters with the round ivory keys for years. I think it actually pushed the keyboard up. I held on to that typewriter until the mid 90s thinking it would be valuable one day.. finally donated it to a thrift shop.. JUST when ebay first started.. and that's when these mid 1800s typewriters skyrocketed in value.. "sigh"

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[doccus]

Wow that's a great snippet for those who don't play computer pinball ;-)

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[doccus]

I wish there was an easy way to disable/enable it.. there's no easy way to tell that that it's on.. often the "engaged" light is hardly visible. This can be a really bad problem for passwords which require correct case, since three strikes in a row can make you have to wait a day. I simply pry it off these days. I tried using software to reassign keys but some simply don't want to ge reassigned such as the switching caps lock with, say, scroll lock .. Maybe it an OSX issue?

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[Darinbob]

Early keyboards I used never had a second control key. And it wasn't around when I learned to touch type. So I learned to do things like Ctrl-A by just shifting the fingers over one space (control key *always* being where capslock is).

Whenever I'm on someone else's keyboard and control key is down in the idiotic IBM position it drives me crazy. Even the Windows and Alt keys are easier to press (Windows/Command is pretty easy as you use your thumb). To push that stupid Control key I have to curl up the pinkie finger and push it with the knuckle.

I never use laptop keyboards unless I'm forced to, I always use an external keyboard.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[rtb61]

So because you are lazy you want to force that confusion on all future generations. Why the fuck are computers intended for primary school not alphabetical, they will not be entering the work force for decades.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[dacaldar]

Yeah, I remember the pain of shift lock on my Commodore 64. I wished for the concept of caps lock instead. Of course in those days I was a child, not a developer, and had almost no use for underscore - it was much more likely that I wanted dash. But the number argument wins out above all.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

How dare you post working code! This site has standards and we expect you not to exceed them.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[samwichse]

THE FIRST POST IN THIS STORY IS A TRUE DISAPPOINTMENT.

THIS MAKES ME ANGRY.

stupid filter stupid filter stupid filter stupid filter stupid filter stupid filter stupid filter stupid filter stupid filter

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[gzuckier]

The Capslock key inherited the position occupied by the Shift-Lock key. Some keyboards still mark it as shift-lock. In the old mechanical typewriters, the shift lock actually moved the entire framework holding the rack of all the levers that held the letters. It required considerable force to push.

...and you could tell from the look and feel of the shift key that it was down. And using the shift key automatically unlocked the shift lock (on many keyboards at least).

If you really want to have that key, it probably ought to go back to that: some kind of mechanical lock on the shift key. Perhaps a smallish button actually physically on one corner of the left shift key.

Some keyboards are nice enough to have a status light in the middle of the capslock key. others try to make do with a status light up in the top right corner, along with numlock and scroll lock. and there are the various softwares that put indicators on the screen. but having it in the key is 1000% better. and one of the windows options is to have the shift key release capslock, which is good. also good the windows accessibility options which have the ability to make the lock keys go boop when you set them on and boopboop when you off them. being microsoft, however, the two options don't work together, so now my keyboard goes boop when i hit capslock, but when i hit shift and it unlocks it just stays quiet.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[gzuckier]

I wish it still behaved as shift-lock: affecting all characters, not just letters. When I use caps lock, it's almost always because I'm typing an environment variable or #defined constant. And that means I'm going to be typing lots of _ characters. If caps lock behaved like shift lock, I wouldn't have to press shift for every one of them.

absofrigginglutely. the underscore is the enemy of capslock.
I confess that's why i try to avoid them, and i avoid camelcase too so all my variables and file names looklikethisbuticanreadthemok.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[RockDoctor]

and the keyboard default layout will never change because at this stage almost everyone in the (developed, at least) world uses a keyboard in that layout.

Dream on, Sunshine.

You describe your frustrations with switching between US and UK layouts. Well, I have that fun, because I'm a Brit and the client's laptop includes software (which I don't use, but "meh") which requires a US-ian layout. But, of course, the physical key caps are laid out in the Dutch pattern (about as different from UK and US as they are from each other. But I've got a Russian keyboard layout installed, for when I'm chatting to the wife from the other side of the world. Three month's ago the trainee (uses the machine on night shift) had German installed because she's German. The partner representatives - who also use the machine - had added Arabic and Turkish layouts. And the next job, we'll have Francophones along, so they'll probably go AZERTY too.

I doubt that a USian or British QWERTY layout is even a majority, worldwide.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[adolf]

First-world problem.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[Hognoxious]

Get a USB one, like the French do.

http://www.ldlc.com/informatiq...

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[tepples]

First-world problem.

Fallacy of relative privation.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[adolf]

Case dismissed.

Re:Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[T.E.D.]

Did German typewriters used to do that too? As mentioned, the original intent of that key back in the typewriter days was to "lock" the device into shifted mode so that key didn't have to be held down. That looks like a total hack to me.

When one goes and repurposes ("hacks") a function to do something other than its original design intent, they shouldn't really be surprised (or complain) when a later redesign leaves their hack high-and-dry.

More realistically, I'm sure if English keyboards get redesigned more sensibly, it wouldn't stop Germans (or anyone else) from using their current Swiss German keyboard layouts to produce their special glyphs. I'd consider renaming it too, but if Germans still want to call it "CAPS-LOCK" even though it does nothing of the sort, that would be their business too.

Re: Caps Lock used to power a huge lever.

[ihtoit]

that's not the reason forms are filled in in uppercase. It's to remove ambiguity in casing when it comes to identifying individuals from documents - you could claim that McCleary and Mccleary are two different people (they're both acceptable variants of the same thing), but when all other details are relevant for two people you can safely make the assumption that the two variants in fact describe the same individual. But still, the argument would be made on the basis of using the wrong camel case! Uppercasing everything removes that avenue and maintains consistency in form data.

Also, and just as importantly, U.C.C. 1-201(10) requires that important terms on official documents such as legal texts especially contracts are displayed PROMINENTLY. The easiest way to do this on any block of text is to PRINT IT IN UPPERCASE. This denotes specific meaning to individual words and strings within the document that are printed in uppercase (often with the help of a glossary of terms at the beginning or end of the document), to differentiate from those same words printed normally. It's the textual equivalent of Legalese.

The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the most useless key on the entire keyboard. Far above the caps lock key.

My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[shankarunni]

1. CapsLock. Grr.

2. The numeric keypad on 15" laptops. Why? Why?! Why?!! It causes the rest of the keys to get scrunched up and moved to unnatural positions, and positions the trackpad offset left upto 3 or 4 inches, which makes for a horrible experience for a right-handed typist. The trackpad should ALWAYS be centered.

3. But please bring back full-size Page Up/Down keys (with maybe a shift action to Begin/End). I'm looking at you, Macbook Pro! Don't run and hide..

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[trabby]

Numpads for the win, handy for spreadsheets, games, entering long numbers etc. I hardly touch the number row on my keyboard. 15" laptop is the minimum that numpads should be included, what I find more disturbing is 17"-18" laptops without them.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[slinches]

1. CapsLock. Grr.

Not having it would be worse. Nearly all engineering drawing (as well as some additional technical writing) standards require the use of all caps to minimize ambiguity. In those cases holding down the shift key is ridiculous.

2. The numeric keypad on 15" laptops. Why? Why?! Why?!!

Because some professions require typing in numbers efficiently? The toggle on number pad layout using letters doesn't work since the keys aren't properly aligned.

3. But please bring back full-size Page Up/Down keys (with maybe a shift action to Begin/End).

This I can somewhat agree with. Though, it usually isn't a problem on full size keyboards.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[__aaclcg7560]

I hate having a numeric keypad on a laptop. I want the keyboard to be centered with the screen and not off to one side. I recently bought an inexpensive 14" Dell laptop because the keyboard didn't have a numeric keypad. The sales clerk tried to upsell me on a 15" Dell laptop with much better hardware specs, but the keyboard had a numeric keypad and I didn't want that.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[rahvin112]

The numeric keypad tends to be pretty highly valued by typists that are 10key proficient and type a lot of numbers. It's actually more common than you probably believe. I and many others prefer to buy laptops/keyboards with the 10 key numeric in place.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[danbert8]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but multiple tapping (5x) of the shift key still enables de-facto "caps lock" via Sticky Keys for the rare users who do want it, use it on a regular basis, and are too lazy to map a keyboard shortcut themselves.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[Noah Haders]

Num pads on a laptop are ergonomics nightmares. Better to get BT numpad.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[slinches]

That's only on Windows as far as I'm aware.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[squiggleslash]

It's possible to have capslock functionality without giving it its own key. What about Alt-Numlock for that tiny subset of situations where it's necessary?

Also https://xkcd.com/1172/

(Yay I posted an XKCD at last! That means I automatically get +6 Insightful!)

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[Geoffrey.landis]

Not having it would be worse. Nearly all engineering drawing (as well as some additional technical writing) standards require the use of all caps to minimize ambiguity. In those cases holding down the shift key is ridiculous.

Worse for your specific case that most people will never hit. A simple shortcut or custom keyboard could fill that role if needed.

Or chose "all caps" font.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[metlin]

I'm looking at you, Macbook Pro!

Cmd + up/down arrows. Not the best solution, but it works, and after a while, you get used to it!

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[darkain]

Pretty much any technical field requires capslock. I'm a software engineer in the automotive field. Tons of code from 3rd party libraries are all caps, as well as the part numbers I deal with in the automotive industry.

Maybe the reason why capslock is used to little is because... think about it. If my entire post were entirely in caps? Count the number of key strokes. Capslock would be pressed once to enter all-caps mode, and once to leave it. To presses of that key vs countless presses of the letters and a few other formatting symbols. Caps lock shouldn't be counted by the number of key presses any more than scroll lock or number lock. Instead they should be counted by the number of other key presses that are modified while they are activated.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[IcyWolfy]

Not having a key-pad on the laptop would be a no-go at our office; and for my personal laptops.
I have to enter numbers quite often; and doing quick calculations is very easy to do touch-typing (not looking at keyboard)

I tried the num-lock keyboard thing on older laptops, but having they keypad un-aligned across the GCR HTN MWV makes it too error prone.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[IcyWolfy]

I so wish Fortran wasn't nearly as popular as it is.
I am always being innundated with job offers in a surprisingly large number of uninteresting (to me) fields.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[IcyWolfy]

1. This would be horrible for anyone using some non US-English keyboards;
For Example: Swiss German Keyboard Layout.
CAPS is a separate keyboard state.
CAPS ON, Key !== SHIFT+Key

ü = ü
Shift-ü = è
CAPS ON, ü = Ü
CAPS ON, Shift-ü = È

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[xfade551]

I'm looking at you, Macbook Pro!

Cmd + up/down arrows. Not the best solution, but it works, and after a while, you get used to it!

It doesn't always work, some applications have Cmd-(up/down arrow) mapped already. However Fn-(up/down arrow) is always Page Up/Down, and (IIRC) Shift-Fn-(up/down arrow) is Home/End.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[TeknoHog]

I guess it depends on what you're used to. I practically grew up with laptops, so I always type numbers with the upper row, even if a numeric pad is available. I also think the number pad is a matter of space and reach, even on a desktop, but especially on a laptop where keys are already crammed. I'm sure a lot of proficient typists also appreciate a centred keyboard on a laptop.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[rahvin112]

Proficiency in 10key can literally double or triple typing rates where the data is numeric. There are a lot of data entry jobs that won't even consider anyone that's not 10key proficient because it makes such a big difference in data entry ability.

Regardless, all I was trying to say is that there are a lot of people out there that won't buy keyboards/laptops that don't have 10key. It's enough market demand that you frequently find laptop keyboards with 10 key even if it makes the rest of the keyboard smaller. The manufacturers wouldn't be doing this if there wasn't a demand for it.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[MaestroRC]

1. CapsLock. Grr.

FYI - if you have a Mac, you can go to System Preferences --> Keyboard --> Modifier Keys, then change Caps Lock to something else. Options are Caps Lock, Control, Option, Command and No Action.

Very useful.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[GuB-42]

having they keypad un-aligned across the GCR HTN MWV makes it too error prone.

Unaligned keys, yet another relic.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[Darinbob]

Laptops are ergonomic nightmares. Attach a real keyboard except for those times when you're stuck in a weird locale (ie, on the bus).

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[Noah Haders]

i don't think my MPB is too bad... i suppose that the keyboard is flush with the "desktop surface" instead of being raised up a half inch or so... trackpads are probably better than mice for rsi...

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[kimvette]

> The numeric keypad tends to be pretty highly valued by typists that are 10key proficient and type a lot of numbers. It's actually more common than you probably believe

That's because a LOT of us spent days keying in program listings from Compute! Magazine in the '80s

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[Gizan]

I personally refuse to buy a laptop that does NOT have a numpad. If it doesnt have one, i skip to the next laptop. I personally use caps lock often. Now its not every day, but its certainly better than holding shift down with my pinky. Ive learened over the last 20 years on the computer to use caps lock, and not shift-lock. I only had shift lock on 1 keyboard and that was when i was on 98. Ive been using the same keyboard since 2000, and its treated me well. Ive ran it through the dish-washer 3 times now to make sure it gets clean, but im starting to wear through my WASDF/C/V KEYS so trying to find a replacement keyboard is going to be a difficulty for me, as i prefer actual button response. i want it to bounce back up when i press it so i know that i actually pressed that button.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[gzuckier]

The numeric keypad tends to be pretty highly valued by typists that are 10key proficient and type a lot of numbers. It's actually more common than you probably believe. I and many others prefer to buy laptops/keyboards with the 10 key numeric in place.

Absolutely. when i'm doing a lot of entry into excel it's numeric keyboard time. getting numbers from the number row is obviously klunky.

Re:My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards)

[toddestan]

My favorite was the Ultrabay numpad that IBM had on the Thinkpad. You lose your optical drive, but instead you gained a super-handy numpad that would slide in and out of the side of your laptop.

The power button

[ShieldW0lf]

Hey, I hardly ever press the power button, lets get rid of that one.

Idiots

Re:The power button

[aaaaaaargh!]

Only crap keyboards have a power button.

Re:The power button

[Fortran IV]

Bingo. The whole point of the Caps Lock key is that you don't have to press it over and over. "...Around 0.1% of all keypresses" is a completely useless measurement. A measurement of how many other keys were pressed while the Caps Lock was on might actually mean something.

That said, the size and placement of Caps Lock are simply a historical accident. If keyboard manufacturers wanted to halve the size and stick another key left of A, that would be fine with me. (The "context menu" key that's missing from so many keyboards these days would be a great choice.)

Re:The power button

[Twinbee]

Except when it's absolutely essential to force power off occasionally.

Re:The power button

[bluefoxlucid]

People don't seem to understand the point of typing multiple capital letters in a row, as they hold shift with a pinky to type COBOL or UNIX. Chromebooks put that useless search button where capslock goes.

Re:The power button

[HideyoshiJP]

I agree. The fools. I work in IT, and have type a lot of things in caps, like certain DNS names, acronyms, and a few other items. At home, I use a Shift-JIS layout for Japanese, and it's one method I switch back and forth between Alpha/Kana/IME input. Right-click has come in handy a few times when my wireless mouse has died and had to go on the charger - then have to re-sync my backup bluetooth mouse. To extend this discussion - I rarely use my backups. Let's get rid of those!

Re:The power button

[j2.718ff]

Only crap keyboards have a power button.

The article also mentioned the right mouse button. My keyboard doesn't have one of those either.

Re:The power button

[Blaskowicz]

I now have a keyboard with power button, sleep and "alarm clock" (don't know what this one is for).

The placement is not too bad (if they were immediately above del, home, page up I would have junked the keyboard)
I disabled the power key, but now use the sleep key. One press and one second or two later the PC is in S3-mode stand by! Pretty useful.
The PC does wake up by wildly clicking the left mouse button (I already used that feature, works after shutdown too). That depends too much on the particular BIOS ; good for now. Wish the power key on keyboard could wake the PC up.

Re:The power button

[AmiMoJo]

Some keyboards do have small caps lock keys. Japanese layouts for example, but even in the west... I seem to recall some 80s computers had caps lock keys of "normal" size, i.e. the same as letter keys.

Re:The power button

[AmiMoJo]

To be fair though, putting power and sleep buttons on the keyboard was a monumentally stupid idea. It's far too easy to accidentally hit them.

Re:The power button

[Blaskowicz]

"Properties menu key" is semi-unnecessary if you know that shift-F10 always does the same thing, but you have to know that.
It's nice to have for keyboard navigation sometimes. Else it's a very good key for Virtualbox's "get focus out of the VM" key.

Re:The power button

[Barefoot Monkey]

I suspect that's the very point GP was trying to get across. The summary notes that the context menu button is used roughly 0.1% of the time and ponders whether it might be a good idea to remove it, but that is poor reasoning because the fact that you don't need to press it anywhere near as as often as alphanumerics or the spacebar doesn't diminish its usefulness.

Re:The power button

[IAN]

The whole point of the Caps Lock key is that you don't have to press it over and over.

Whew, so I'm not the only one... But why is that point lost on the modern crowd? Is nobody a touch typist anymore? I've been taught that capital letters are typed by pressing the Shift key on the opposite side of the key being input, which gets ridiculous if you have to enter a longish string of capitals, e.g., echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH (and no, I might not be in a shell which lets me autocomplete that one, thanks for asking). So CapsLock is far from useless. Dual Ctrls likewise, by analogy with dual Shifts -- I'd never contort my fingers by typing Ctrl-T or Ctrl-B single-handedly, even if Ctrl were in the usual CapsLock position (which some people obviously prefer.)

Re:The power button

[WallyL]

Interesting, I press that one all the time!



Oh, you wanted to know if I meant to press it. Definitely not. Yes, let's can it!

Re:The power button

[IcyWolfy]

That logic doesn't apply for most non-US layouts; and most Americans don't realise that the concept of a right-alt key being required is needed.
And that due to proliferation of US keyboards and Windows back in the day: ALT-GR ~== CTRL-ALT. Some apps will treat it as CTRL-ALT (incorrectly), some will treat it as ALT-GR. Thus, some applications fail hard when they try to make CTRL-ALT accceleratiors, that can't be typed; or they override the letter on the keyboard (which is probably worse)

You have three modifier keys: CTRL, ALT, ALTGR, CTRL
For instance, to type @ on the standard german layout, it's ALTGR-Q
The Canadian Multilingual Layout (Federal Standard) does this better by having CTRL, ALT, ALTGR, CTRLGR (i.e. there are four alpha states: NONE, SHIFT, ALTGR, CTRLGR)

Re:The power button

[Twinbee]

Ah I see I was whooshed. Surprised I missed it tbh.

Re:The power button

[kimvette]

> To extend this discussion - I rarely use my backups. Let's get rid of those!

I did better than that - to save time and also the hassle of cycling through and keeping track of tapes; I just back up to /dev/null now... and you'd be amazed at how quickly the backup job runs!

Re:The power button

[tepples]

Only crap keyboards have a power button.

How else do you turn on a laptop? Or do better laptops have the power button on the screen half of the assembly?

Re:The power button

[eionmac]

Once per year perhaps?

Re:The power button

[Blaskowicz]

Gnome 2 clones (well, at least Mate, perhaps LXDE and Xfce) seem to copy the Windows behavior there.

Re:The power button

[ihtoit]

the power button on my laptop is the lid switch.

I drop the lid when the laptop's already powered down. When I lift it, it powers on.

Now I want to find a way of remapping that button for something else...

Really?

[Dr. Eggman]

"They installed a simple Chrome plugin on every Macbook [...] the least popular keys are Capslock and Right Mouse Button"

You don't say!

Re:REALLY?

[bev_tech_rob]

"Why Is the Caps Lock Key Still So Prominent On Keyboards?"

HAS THE OP BEEN ON THE INTERNET AT ALL? EVER?

Although, I do like to imagine some of the rage typists are actually holding in the [Shift] key...

NO KIDDING! CAPS LOCK IS very HANDY WHEN SHOUTING AT PEOPLES!

Re:REALLY?

[Lab Rat Jason]

THIS111

I wish I had mod points... Also, the assumption that the caps lock key isn't being used because it is pressed infrequently is disingenuous.

Re:REALLY?

[Esther Schindler]

Ha!

I started in mainframe days when SO MANY PROGRAMMERS I KNEW TYPED IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THAT WAS THE ONLY THING THE COMPILER UNDERSTOOD.

And then those people tried to use email, and thought that it was perfectly fine to write all non-programming correspondence that way. Including my brother-in-law... and you can't tell your BiL he's an idiot. Not if you want your sister to keep talking to you.

Re:Really?

[TheRaven64]

Good UIs should be designed to work with a single mouse button, because that means that they'll also work well with a touchscreen. There's nothing wrong with making some things faster with the right mouse button, which is how most Mac applications work. The right mouse button for the context menu was inherited from NeXTSTEP, where the 'normal' menu was a floating version and you could cause a copy of it to pop up wherever the mouse was with the right mouse button (RISC OS took this further and didn't have any kind of menu bar, using the middle mouse button to produce the menu on demand. Using RISC OS with a touchscreen or pen tablet was... interesting, and it only just counted as discoverable because the machines shipped with a mouse with the buttons labelled).

Re:REALLY?

[danbert8]

I know when I get angry I hold down shift... I have disabled caps lock on all my keyboards via software.

Re:Really?

[dissy]

"They installed a simple Chrome plugin on every Macbook [...] the least popular keys are Capslock and Right Mouse Button"

You don't say!

Right click is pretty popular on most every desktop OS out there.

What shocks me the most is they didn't report mouse buttons 3, 4, and 5 as least used.
Button 3 is pretty well used by power users, but 4/5 require an external mouse, so macbooks don't have those two buttons built in as hardware.

I'm still waiting on Windows to actually add in support for buttons 4 and 5 instead of faking it and mapping them to browser forward/back.

The most used desktop OS (Windows) still to this day doesn't support as many mouse buttons as younger OSes like OS X and Linux, it's simply amazing.

Re:Really?

[radarskiy]

Mice from Apple don't have any buttons any more. However, Mac OS has accepted events for more that the left button for years.

Re:REALLY?

[Bing Tsher E]

When I first started programming, it was on Teletype ASR-33 terminals, where there WAS no lower case at all.

The TRS-80 Model 1 had no lower case, either, unless you bought a hardware upgrade. I think it was a special ROM you added.

Re:REALLY?

[Qzukk]

Although, I do like to imagine some of the rage typists are actually holding in the [Shift] key...

THANKS FOR TELLING ME ABOUT CAPS LOCK1 NOW I DON'T HAVE TO HOLD THE SHIFT KEY ANYMORE1

Re:Really?

[Mr. Shiny And New]

I think you're missing the GP's point. Macs usually only have one-button mice. So it's not surprising that the RMB is never used, as there isn't one.

Re:Really?

[Blaskowicz]

Bad wording : I assume they meant the "properties menu" key.

Re:Really?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

err, I have an Apple mighty mouse I use when logged onto unix machines. It not only has a right mouse, but a scroll wheel and some side click buttons.

Now, if you talk about a trackpad, they really should be tracking option or Command clicking.

Re:Really?

[SvnLyrBrto]

That hasn't been true for almost a decade now. Apple began shipping the multiple-button Mighty Mouse with all new Macs in October 2005:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Its replacement, the Magic Mouse, supports right-click and replaces the trackball functions by making the entire top surface a trackpad. The Magic Trackpad, and all MacBook trackpads last support right-click; either by tapping with two fingers instead of one, or by clicking in the right-bottom corner instead of the left.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Really?

[Mr. Shiny And New]

The point still stands that Apple is a one-button-mouse ecosystem. Forever they only had one button and few apps supported multiple buttons. Sure, they eventually made it possible to right-click, but on a touch-pad it's not an obvious feature, and in any case most apps will still be made for only one button. So it's not surprising that Mac users rarely right-click.

Re:Really?

[xfade551]

Even more importantly, the trackpad on a MacBook only has one-button. You have to hold down Ctrl to "right-click", and the trick doesn't work when running Windows through BootCamp or Parallels.

Re:Really?

[jrumney]

These types of studies come in three forms: lies, damned lies and statistics. This statement is a red flag which eliminates one of these.

Re:Really?

[R3d M3rcury]

You have to hold down Ctrl to "right-click"

Or go to the Trackpad system preference and choose to make a two-finger tap into a right click.

Re:Really?

[TheRaven64]

That's not been true for a very long time. Current MacBook Pro trackpads (i.e. the ones that TFA is about) use one finger tap for left click, two finger tap for right click, two finger drag for scroll, and four-finger drag for some system-wide gestures. The 'Mac mice only have one button' thing is a decade old (and even before that, Macs supported multi-button mice, they just required that UIs be designed to work well with one-button input devices).

Misunderstood

[Anonymous Coward]

The Caps Lock is the only key near home row that is explicitly a "toggle" function, and maintains that association across uses (whereas Ctrl, Fn, Alt all need to be held down in combination with other keys). What would be a better default function for this keys beside toggling caps?

Re:Misunderstood

[wirefarm]

Ctrl.

(Typing this on a day-old Chromebook that has a search key mapped to that position. Anyone know how I can map that to Ctrl?)

Re:Misunderstood

[chipschap]

I always remap caps lock to left ctrl, the way it used to be on rather old keyboards. So much more convenient than having to reach down to the left-ctrl key.

Re:Misunderstood

[DrJimbo]

Typing this on a day-old Chromebook that has a search key mapped to that position [Caps Lock, I presume]. Anyone know how I can map that to Ctrl?

On Linux I use:
setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps

Re:Misunderstood

[polymeris]

I remap it with Esc.
Only problem is, I am so used to it, I have trouble using vim on other people's computer.

Re:Misunderstood

[Fwipp]

If you're using ChromeOS (which you probably are), go to:
Settings -> Keyboard Settings
and adjust the "Search" dropdown to your choice. (Search;Ctrl;Alt;Escape;Caps; or disabled).

You can also adjust ctrl & alt in the same way.

Re:Misunderstood

[fisted]

protip: if you have literally no clue about something, it's best to remain silent.

Re:Misunderstood

[fisted]

Fun fact: creating user accounts requires superuser access, which you generally don't have on other people's computer.

Re:Misunderstood

[gzuckier]

I always remap caps lock to left ctrl, the way it used to be on rather old keyboards. So much more convenient than having to reach down to the left-ctrl key.

The qwerty keyboard uses the little fingers way too much to begin with, for some reason pc keyboard designers seem determined to make it worse.

Because it toggles an LED!

[Anonymous Coward]

Old School Fun Fact: If the computer looks hung or otherwise nonresponsive, if you can toggle the caps lock LED, then the OS is still alive.

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[RavenLrD20k]

Num Lock and Scroll Lock also provide the same functionality, but the positioning of Caps Lock just makes it convenient.

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[trabby]

Just look out if you computer is an old amiga, flashing capslock = BAD

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[__aaclcg7560]

Does anyone use Scroll Lock for anything?

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've long wanted a game where you are a wizard, and thieves steal your scrolls, unless you Scroll Lock. But then you can't use the scrolls, until you toggle it back. It would be pretty perfect.

Scroll Lock is legitimately used in spreadsheets, but very rarely today. It's generally good that there is some modal switch anyway. It's so rare to find some future expandable slots on a keyboard, you know?

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[Bing Tsher E]

On my KVM, Scroll Lock switches to the next machine.

That's a really good use for it. It also has use in Excel.

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[squiggleslash]

Yes, those of us using CP/M on our VT102s can't just pipe everything through more "more" you insensitive clod!

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[j2.718ff]

Num Lock and Scroll Lock also provide the same functionality, but the positioning of Caps Lock just makes it convenient.

Caps lock is particularly more convenient on a mac book on account that neither scroll lock nor caps lock exist on current apple keyboards.

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[72beetle]

Keeps your character movement to a single space in Rogue.

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[Khashishi]

Scroll lock is somewhat useful in Excel to switch between cell movement and page movement. For some reason, Word hasn't adopted a similar feature for character movement versus page movement.
Hell, browsers could make excellent use of scroll lock to switch between caret movement and page movement.

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[IcyWolfy]

1. This would be horrible for anyone using some non US-English keyboards;
For Example: Swiss German Keyboard Layout.
CAPS is a separate keyboard state.
CAPS ON, Key !== SHIFT+Key

ü = ü
Shift-ü = è
CAPS ON, ü = Ü
CAPS ON, Shift-ü = È

The Caps Lock key is needed.
Sure, you can always use ALT-GR ', SHIFT-E; but that does get very tiring, if you always need to use four-button, two-keystroke combos to type fundamental letters in your alphabet.

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[LMariachi]

The VirtualBox console uses it, I imagine because a guest OS or application might want pgup and pgdown to itself.

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[ArylAkamov]

First time I've ever seen anyone else mention this trick, it's always the first thing I do before considering a hard reset. What's the logic behind it though?

Re: Because it toggles an LED!

[DNS-and-BIND]

Pressing shift one time is the least destructive way to wake up a computer that may be in screensaver or sleep.

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[dargaud]

In a KDE Konsole terminal, it's the same as Ctrl-S / Ctrl-Q, so in other words a real scroll lock.

I also use it to switch out of a virtual machine in VirtualBox.

But back to the original question, in Linux, replace Caps-Lock with a Compose key by setting it in [Settings][Input Devices][Keyboard][Advanced][Position of Compose Key][Caps Lock] and then enjoy being able to type any accents or weird letter very simply.

And also for the idiots who never use right-click or the Menu key: you are an idiot and should never be allowed to hit two stones together to try and make fire. (Dell, I'm looking at you for removing the Menu key even from 17" laptops!)

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[Alioth]

Yes. Switching computers on my KVM switch (scroll lock + console number)

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[Some_Llama]

you can also toggle the num lock key for the same effect.

Re:Because it toggles an LED!

[Ambient Sheep]

Num Lock and Scroll Lock also provide the same functionality, but the positioning of Caps Lock just makes it convenient.

Careful! Not sure how much it's still true, but it used to be the case with many keyboards that Num Lock toggled the LED inside the keyboard, so it would still go on and off even if the main CPU was as hung as hung could be. Only Caps and Scroll provided a decent "are you still alive?" check.

It's shift for some people

[spacemky]

Working in IT, and frequently watching desktop users, I was surprised to learn that MANY people actually use the Caps Lock key as shift. To make a capital letter, they will turn on caps, press the letter, then turn off caps. I've see 3 people in the last year do this!

Re:It's shift for some people

[kbranch]

We actually recently hired a developer that does this. He asked for help when he couldn't figure out how to type capital letters on my keyboard (with caps lock remapped to control). Raised an alarm or two for me...

Re:It's shift for some people

[Esther Schindler]

That's pretty weird, I agree.

Re:It's shift for some people

[blue trane]

It's convenient. You might be typing with one hand, for example. Please don't take the caps lock away from me because you want everything to be popular.

Re:It's shift for some people

[GungaDan]

A one-handed typist with a thing against popularity? You go for the bizarre fetish stuff, don't you?

Re:It's shift for some people

[QuietLagoon]

You might be typing with one hand, for example.

There are "sticky key" features in many OS's that duplicate that functionality.

Re:It's shift for some people

[Esther Schindler]

I don't mind there being a caps lock key. But does it have to be bigger than most other keys? And in the way of other more-used ones?

Re:It's shift for some people

[RingDev]

Most of the devs here come from COBOL/Mainframe backgrounds. So capslock is heavily abused, as is 4 letter abbreviations for every word, and excessive use of underscores.

-Rick

Re:It's shift for some people

[gstoddart]

Rule 34.

Some things should not be googled. Ever.

Re:It's shift for some people

[houghi]

I see it a lot when people type in their password. That way they know the caps is actually on or off.

Re:It's shift for some people

[MobyDisk]

When I was in elementary school my computer keyboard had a broken space bar and left shift key. I learned to type space as ALT+032 and used caps lock for shift. It took me years to unlearn the caps-lock thing. Video games were tough, but most were text-based anyway. In some cases I could hack the binary to use a different key instead of space (*).

And folks, THAT is how you learn to code. Necessity is the mother of learning.

Re:It's shift for some people

[dweezil-n0xad]

I have one functional hand and I have edited my keymap in linux console to have sticky keys in console. In Xfce it's easier, just toggle a switch in the accessibility settings.

Re:It's shift for some people

[AmiMoJo]

A friend of mine uses Caps Lock instead of shift, but he also types insanely fast. He sees it as inserting commands into the input stream, and claims it is faster for him.

Re:It's shift for some people

[IcyWolfy]

This is required for some keyboard layouts.
For Example: Swiss German Keyboard Layout.
CAPS is a separate keyboard state.
CAPS ON, Key !== SHIFT+Key

[u-UMLAUT] = [u-UMLAUT]
Shift-[u-UMLAUT] = [e-acute]
CAPS ON, [u-umlaut] = [U-umlaut]
CAPS ON, Shift-[u-umlaut] = [E-umlaut]

Thus, to type capital [e-acute]; one would go: Caps; shift-[u-umlaut]; Caps.
For Capital [u-umlaut]; Caps; [u-umlaut]; Caps.

For other non-latin layouts:
CAPS lock is a toggle between QWERTY and native

This is the same in Czech Layout:
The top row of keys are + e^ s^ c^ r^ z^ y' a' i' e' =
Shift top row = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 %
Caps: + E^ S^ C^ R^ Z^ Y' A' I' E' =
Caps Shift: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 %

In others, CAPS != SHIFT.
Devanagari: Caps state is ignored, but SHIFT keys change letter selection.
Thus CAPS-O == O (dependant-O); and CAPS-SHIFT-O = SHIFT-O (independent-O)

Re:It's shift for some people

[IcyWolfy]

ü = ü
Shift-ü = è
CAPS ON, ü = Ü
CAPS ON, Shift-ü = È

top row in Czech being: +ýáíéú
SHIFT state: 1234567890%
CAPS state: + (uppercased)
CAPS SHIFT State: 1234567890%

Didn't realize unicode works in posts.

Re:It's shift for some people

[chispito]

I was surprised to learn that MANY people actually use the Caps Lock key as shift.

It's not just PEBKACs that do that. One of the world's fastest typists does this. http://seanwrona.com/typing.ph... (look under the "Typing Tips" section).

Re:It's shift for some people

[DrVxD]

"One-handed typing" offers plenty of opportunities for "sticky keys" without OS assistance...

Re:It's shift for some people

[dargaud]

Our senior sysadmin here types with only one finger while looking at the keyboard. 40 years experience too...

Re:It's shift for some people

[PPalmgren]

Both my current manager and previous manager do this. You can pry the capslock key from their cold dead hands.

On another note, I do use it quite extensively. I fill out tax forms whatnot all the time, capslock block print is easier to parse when reviewing for spelling errors. It also prevents over/under capitalization, which shouldn't be the main focus when reviewing those kinds of documents.

Re:It's shift for some people

[ihtoit]

my wife does this, it bugs the shit out of me.

REALLY?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why Is the Caps Lock Key Still So Prominent On Keyboards?"

HAS THE OP BEEN ON THE INTERNET AT ALL? EVER?

Although, I do like to imagine some of the rage typists are actually holding in the [Shift] key...

We all hit it by accident

[heezer7]

So I just tear mine off. Much less frustration.

Re:We all hit it by accident

[McLae]

I just took mine off.

Bread crumbs, dog hair....

Oh wait, something thing just moved!

Re:We all hit it by accident

[fisted]

The more intelligent people remap it to something useful, because of its extremely good position on the keyboard.

i'VE BEEN HATING THE caps lock KEY FOR DECADES

[QuietLagoon]

I've tried re-mapping it (Windows occasionally chokes, needing a reboot).

.
I've tried removing the key top (bruise on my finger when I accidentally hit it).

Why is this throwback to punch cards still around?

Re:i'VE BEEN HATING THE caps lock KEY FOR DECADES

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried re-mapping it (Windows occasionally chokes, needing a reboot).

.

I've tried removing the key top (bruise on my finger when I accidentally hit it).

Why is this throwback to punch cards still around?

Just because you don't have a use-case for it, doesn't mean that there are no use-cases for it.

For example: I work for a news-producing television station, and we use caps lock extensively for creating scripts, which are fed to the teleprompter. Mixed case is very hard to read (and prone to mistakes) on a teleprompter screen and on the hard copies that we have on hand in case of a technical failure.

Re:i'VE BEEN HATING THE caps lock KEY FOR DECADES

[QuietLagoon]

Just because you don't have a use-case for it, doesn't mean that there are no use-cases for it.

This is not about the existence of use-cases, but the amount of use.

.
There is a difference.

I do not deny that the CAPS LOCK key is widely used within niche environments.

I also do not advocate eliminating the CAPS LOCK key, merely moving it to a place that is more aligned with the amount of use it gets.

Re:i'VE BEEN HATING THE caps lock KEY FOR DECADES

[omnichad]

Why is this throwback to punch cards still around?

Accessibility? I hurt one hand and typed one-handed for a while. Used caps lock to type capital letters. I use caps-lock on my phone all the time for passwords when operating one-handed.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[mwvdlee]

Just curious, what OS are you using?
On both Windows and Linux, it's a pretty handy key.

Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I can't believe that "Scroll Lock" is used more often than "Caps Lock"

>> least popular keys are...Right Mouse Button

I'm guessing their "developers" don't actually use an IDE. Even on my Mac I use a two-button mouse just to get context-sensitive menus.

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[Lisias]

I can't believe that "Scroll Lock" is used more often than "Caps Lock"

>> least popular keys are...Right Mouse Button

I'm guessing their "developers" don't actually use an IDE. Even on my Mac I use a two-button mouse just to get context-sensitive menus.

Half baked researches from half baked researchers about half assed developers.

(A lot of web designers are calling themselves "developers" nowadays)

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[mccalli]

The study was performed on a MacBook keyboard. There is no scroll lock, print screen, pause, insert, home, end, page up, page down...

As a MacBook user myself, I actually miss the insert for shift-insert cut'n'paste on ssh sessions. Other than that, I'm fine with all the others being missing. The right-click is interesting - do they literally mean right-click, or do they mean the context-sensitive event (two fingered click on a trackpad)? On a MacBook I would have thought the second one, and I also use that a fair amount.

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[ceoyoyo]

They were using a Chrome plugin as a key logger so presumably this only reflects input to their web browser. Not surprising the managers had higher activity than the "developers" either.

Re: Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[MadChicken]

Yeah for function documentation or "jump to declaration" kinda stuff... But once you start to use that often enough you start to look for and then use the keyboard shortcut.

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[Lisias]

+1 Informative, please.

(I have a KVM too, and it works exactly the way GP says!)

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[Bing Tsher E]

I think you meant to say: "A lot of people who obfuscate standards-based marked up text with shitty scripts, ridgid layout and little widgets and dingbats call themselves web designers nowadays."

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[PitaBred]

Command-C, command-V. It works in the terminal just like in the rest of your apps. It's one of the things that I actually prefer about the Mac that I'm working on nowadays.

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[ArcadeMan]

That's what I'm wondering too. Were they really talking about Chrome the Web browser or Chrome OS the Operating System*?

* brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[TimothyDavis]

I'm guessing their "developers" don't actually use an IDE. Even on my Mac I use a two-button mouse just to get context-sensitive menus.

I could be wrong, but I was assuming this was because it was being tracked by a Chrome plugin that much of the activity outside of the web browser was not captured.

I personally use caps lock all the time when typing SQL queries. Outside of that, I rarely use it.

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[Ben174]

I think they're referring to the Context Menu button on your standard 104-key keyboard (next to the right win-key or super-key). They might be calling it the 'right-mouse button' because on Windows it pulls up the same context menu the right mouse button does.

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[ejasons]

Command-C, command-V. It works in the terminal just like in the rest of your apps. It's one of the things that I actually prefer about the Mac that I'm working on nowadays.

And, since Command is used for shortcuts on the Mac, that leaves Control (mapped to be left of the "A" key, of course) available for emacs-style editing functions...

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[LMariachi]

Does fn+arrows no longer do pgup, pgdown, home, & end on the newer MacBooks?

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[fisted]

The one I use does it with a double tap on Numlock. More FreeBSD friendly, I suppose.

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[Lisias]

I think you meant to say: "A lot of people who obfuscate standards-based marked up text with shitty scripts, ridgid layout and little widgets and dingbats call themselves web designers nowadays."

That too.

But from my point of view (I *AM* a software developer), I'm getting too much web designers (and some of them are good web designers, I give them that) demanding to get voice on how I code the functionalities. I agree that they know *WHAT* they want, but I am the fscking technician that know HOW the things must be done - they don't know (neither have how to) what happens behind the doors, that is exactly what I'm specialized on.

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[Lisias]

They're trying to TEACH ME HOW TO CODE, by God's sake!!

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[PPalmgren]

What the hell, no home/end/pgup/pgdn? That sounds like quite the horror story. I use them all day every day. What do you do on webpages, sit there and hold the mouse? Slow scroll with the arrow keys? ewwwwww

Working in spreadsheets, pgup/pgdn and home/end are insanely useful. ctrl+pg cycles through tabs. End takes you to the end of the current area, home to the top.

Re:Where's "Scroll Lock"?

[goose-incarnated]

?

* brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department brought you this message

*That's* the full joke (is it still funny if you have to explain it?)

Caps lock - Ctrl

[judhaz]

I always remap CapsLock to Ctrl. I am an Emacs user.

a nice Linux trick

[FudRucker]

this makes the caps lock and escape keys switch places

! Swap caps lock and escape
remove Lock = Caps_Lock
keysym Escape = Caps_Lock
keysym Caps_Lock = Escape
add Lock = Caps_Lock

Re:a nice Linux trick

[aardvarkjoe]

Unfortunately it's hard to get xmodmap to play nicely in cases like hotplugging keyboards or using Gnome, at least under Linux. There is a standard option for swapping caps lock and control (or escape, or several other similar options), but if you want a layout option that isn't built-in, then prepare yourself for a world of frustration.

Re:a nice Linux trick

[ciascu]

Swapping Caps and Escape has changed my life to the extent I would consider carrying little stickers around for all the keyboards I remap. Unsurprisingly, I'm a fairly heavy vim user, but I believe this is an increasing trend, especially on Mac.

As vi was written on an ADM-3A, which had Esc in the currently common Tab location, the notoriously heavy use of Esc in vim makes sense. However, swapping with Caps makes it reachable from the home position - initially skeptical, I only realised how much of a difference it makes when I tried to switch back...

On Gnome 3, I have recently switched from using xmodmap to setting org.desktop.gnome.input-sources.xkb-options to ['caps:swapescape'] in dconf-editor. Much easier.

Re:a nice Linux trick

[aardvarkjoe]

Swapping Caps and Escape has changed my life to the extent I would consider carrying little stickers around for all the keyboards I remap. Unsurprisingly, I'm a fairly heavy vim user...

If you swap caps with control, then in vim you can use Control-[ for escape, which is also a pretty good option. (That's what I do.)

On Gnome 3, I have recently switched from using xmodmap to setting org.desktop.gnome.input-sources.xkb-options to ['caps:swapescape'] in dconf-editor. Much easier.

The problem I had was I wanted to map the CapsLock key to Control, and the LeftCtrl key to Hyper. There are built-in xkb rules for doing both, but they don't work right when you try to combine them, and the documentation available for xkb is hard to understand, to say the least. I finally got it working by hacking one of the rules definitions in the system-provided definition files to do what I wanted -- I gave up trying to figure out how to do it the "right" way.

SubjectsSuck

[aardvarkjoe]

I can I invest in a real alternate keyboard with a different layout...

You could also invest in a tool to remap the key next to 'A' to "Control," like God intended. You don't need to get a whole new keyboard. Write on the key with a marker if you're the kind of person that looks at key labels when you're typing.

Re:SubjectsSuck

[dcollins117]

You could also invest in a tool to remap the key next to 'A' to "Control," like God intended.

Do you really need to "invest in a tool" to do that? If so, let me know and I'll sell you one. Price varies, depending on how much you have.

Re:SubjectsSuck

[Daniel_Staal]

If the submitter is working with Kinesis keyboards, remapping is built in to the keyboard. They probably don't want to remap to Control - the Kinesis Advantage keyboards have them in a thumb key array, which is actually awesome - but I find swapping it with the backtick/tilde key is very useful.

(Kinesis Advantage keyboards have a mostly QWERTY layout (or mostly Dvorak, if you buy that option), but split the keys into two sections, and have separate key clusters under each thumb - putting space directly under the right thumb and backspace directly under the left. Exact layout of Control/Windows/Command/Opt/Alt depends on which model you buy: Windows, Mac, or Other, but they are clustered around the thumbs.)

Re:SubjectsSuck

[Dynamoo]

Are you Jerry Pournelle?.

(How come I can remember an article from 1988, but not remember to buy lemons when I'm at the supermarket?)

Re:SubjectsSuck

[ihtoit]

we know a song about that.

"Do you suffer from short term memory loss?"

"...I can't remember."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

keypad

[ichthus]

We talked about this ad naseum back when Chromebooks were about to hit the market. A better question is, why don't keypads (the 10 key-like group of buttons on the right of a PC keyboard) have TAB, SHIFT+TAB and Backspace keys. This would make it much easier to navigate and enter data in web forms and spreadsheets with only one hand. Idunno -- just a thought.

Re:keypad

[Electricity Likes Me]

I'd settle for a "command space" key and a custom terminal. "Caps Lock" specifies I'm entering a new string in a new array position for argv,

Re:keypad

[Bing Tsher E]

A better question would be, why do Chromebooks even have keyboards? Can't you stab at the ads on the Google page with your finger or the huge keyboard-sized touchpad?

Re:keypad

[dinfinity]

Num lock gives you access to arrow keys, and many more keys (Ins, Del, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn) that should suffice for spreadsheet navigation.

Also: what the hell are you doing with your left hand that you can't press TAB or SHIFT+TAB? What kind of forms are you filling out??

Caps Lock was invented by Kim Fatty III

[WillAffleckUW]

All hail our nation's glorious 50 cent posters from Korea West!

Shouting is the polite way to show how empty one's brain is.

SO PEOPLE CAN GET MAD AT YOUR FOR SHOUTING

[zenlessyank]

SEE??!! YOU CAN ALREADY FEEL THE ANGER RISING UP FROM THE LOUD VOICE!!! Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. ...See??? Slashdot says no when I try to shout. Im sad.

The three keys on the top-right

[mwvdlee]

The three keys on the top-right
- Print screen/SysRequest: a poor man's screengrabber at best
- Scroll Lock: does something in MS Office, though I know not what.
- Pause/Break: as far as I know, does absolutely nothing in any application.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[davidleelambert]

On a Lenovo T430, the three keys at top-right are "End", "Insert", "Delete". "PrtSc" is between right "Alt" and right "Ctrl", and RHEL6 with Gnome brings up a nice "Save Screenshot" dialog when I click it.

On an HP ProBook 6450b, the three kets at top-right are "pause"/"break", "insert"/"prt sc", "delete"/"sys rq" (where the second function requires simultaneously holding boxed "fn", between "ctrl" and the Windows logo key)

There are OSes and application programs that allow using Caps Lock as a more-general IM switcher, although I don't think I've ever set that up.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[ewhac]

Scroll Lock: does something in MS Office, though I know not what.

Dunno how Office (mis-)uses it, but the FreeBSD console uses Scroll Lock to freeze the console and let you page up and down through the scrollback buffer.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[SuricouRaven]

On Excel, scroll lock toggles the action of the arrow keys. With lock off, they move the selected cell one step at a time. With lock on, they move the view one page at a time. The second mode is useful if you work with truly huge spreadsheets.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[Locke2005]

Print Screen is actually useful; in Windows it copies the current screen or window to the clipboard, which is useful for people writing manuals. In 32 years of writing software, I don't recall ever using the Scroll Lock or Break key for anything... and I'm not really sure what they are supposed to do. I think Break was supposed to used with modems; not much call for that anymore.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[mattventura]

SysRq is useful for getting Linux systems unstuck with Magic SysRq key combos. Well, that was until most distros decided to lock it down by default (because if someone wanted to mess with a machine that they have physical access to, that's definitely the worst thing they could come up with).

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[rgbscan]

So much this.... I spend my life in a 3270 terminal doing work on a mainframe. P/B and SysRq are actually used quite a bit daily.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[ArcadeMan]

On Apple keyboards, those keys are F13, F14 and F15. I even have F16, F17, F18 and F19... The top row of my keyboard is a freakin' aircraft carrier.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[techno-vampire]

If you expect to need it, create the file /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq with the contents set to 1. This makes the key combo active by default, and survives rebooting. Of course, you need to test it while the system's in good shape because different mobos respond to different combinations. (I had one, once that needed Left-Ctrl, Right-Alt and SysRQ to work, and only that combo worked.)

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[Pfhorrest]

Why not just use pgup/pgdn for the latter function?

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[Khashishi]

On DOS, CTRL+break was used sometimes to attempt (usually futilely) to exit from a hung program. I think there's actually some difference between ctrl+c and ctrl+break, but in practice I don't think it amounts to much. For some reason, in Windows, they decided to use ctrl+alt+del to bring up the task manager. It used to reboot the computer. It would have been more consistent if they used ctrl-break for the task manager.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[JesseMcDonald]

If you expect to need it, create the file /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq with the contents set to 1. This makes the key combo active by default, and survives rebooting.

The /proc directory is a virtual filesystem; nothing in there survives rebooting. If you want the sysrq keys to remain enabled after a reboot you need to write to that file from an init script.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[edtice1559]

CTRL-ALT-DEL is handled in a very special way by the BIOS. And that propagates all the way up to the OS. ctrl-shift-esc will also bring up the task manager (in one key combination). If the machine isn't responding, you hit ctrl-alt-del. If the OS is healthy enough to bring up a task manager, it can do so. Otherwise, the BIOS will reboot the machine.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[techno-vampire]

I sit corrected. The article I used as a reference only told how to activate it on a working system, not how to make it active by default, and I misread. If you want it active at boot, you need to add the line kernel.sysrq = 1 to /etc/sysctl.conf.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[mattventura]

The problem is that if a system is hosed to the point of needed to SysRq it, I can't edit that file to enable it.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[techno-vampire]

So what's to stop you from editing that file right now so that if and when you need it, it's ready?

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[SuricouRaven]

I don't use Excel much, my memory was off.

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[mwvdlee]

Well, I mostly use my computer for checking if I'm still running the same operating system, so I wonder why I never noticed winkey+break before. This combo will save me literally hours every day. Didn't know it could be so incredibly useful. Thanks!

Re:The three keys on the top-right

[olterman]

Scroll lock is good when the text scrolling is a little bit too fast to be readable (you know the timing when to press it but do not have time to read the actual text). Pressing it usually also pauses the program execution. Some old terminals, old computers or "fast" modem connections would be some examples.

False mapping

[Pseudonymous Powers]

In the light of history, I'm not sure one should draw too many generalizations from the fact that "right mouse button" is the second-least used "key" on the Mac. Getting it added to the mouse at all took decades, and though I don't use Macs often, I wouldn't be on board for making it any smaller.

Besides, saying that you should make the right mouse-button smaller just because it's only used occasionally is like saying toilets should be the size of pickle jars because you only use them a few minutes a day.

Swap the Ctrl and Alt keys

[fustakrakich]

Please!

And give us back our reset button, and disk activity light, so I know if the machine froze up! What the hell is the matter with you people?

And you can have my right mouse button when you can pry it from my cold dead hands.

Re:Swap the Ctrl and Alt keys

[SuricouRaven]

With SSDs you can't even hear the drive going - that activity light is more important than ever!

Re:Swap the Ctrl and Alt keys

[ArcadeMan]

But wouldn't activity lights (read/write) use more power than the SSD itself?

Re:Swap the Ctrl and Alt keys

[lgw]

Oddly enough, I've always been able to hear my SSDs (of various brands) when they were accessed, at least in a quiet room. I've always wondered why.

Re:Swap the Ctrl and Alt keys

[fustakrakich]

Sure you aren't hearing the network? That's the case with an old laptop I have. Damn thing squeals like an old TV, up and down with the brightness, but not nearly so loud. Maybe it's the power supply.

Re:Swap the Ctrl and Alt keys

[ThatsMyNick]

It is the fan revving up to cool the SSD (or the CPU that is using the data)

Re:Swap the Ctrl and Alt keys

[AmiMoJo]

Most likely coil whine from a badly designed power supply.

Re:Swap the Ctrl and Alt keys

[ihtoit]

Never mind those, I want my Turbo switch back.

Re:Swap the Ctrl and Alt keys

[ihtoit]

no, your average 2.5" SSD draws 600mA on the +5V rail, which is about 3W. Your average 2mm indicator LED draws all of 20mA@3.3V. At 5V it would lase.

First let's consolidate all keyboards.

[martiniturbide]

It will be great if it can be some efforts to try to consolidate the keyboards worldwide to have the same number of keys, key shapes and distributions. Why the US Keyboard has a smaller "enter" key compared to the Latin America Keyboard? I fell more important having a big enter key :)

After consolidating the world's keyboards, you can remove with CapsLock key with a knife :)

Re:First let's consolidate all keyboards.

[SEE]

Mechanically, it's mostly already consolidated down to three - the ANSI, ISO, and JIS keyboards.

Re:First let's consolidate all keyboards.

[mattventura]

Why the US Keyboard has a smaller "enter" key

At its left extreme, it's much closer to home row than the ISO enter and thus more efficient to hit. Same thing with the left shift key.

Re:First let's consolidate all keyboards.

[CronoCloud]

Why the US Keyboard has a smaller "enter" key compared to the Latin America Keyboard? I fell more important having a big enter key :)

It has a smaller enter key to have a larger delete key

This is the original PC keyboard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Notice how some of the keys are actually wider at their base than the top of the key. Also notice that the pipe/backslash key is next to the Z key. This keyboard was NOT loved by those who had used other keyboards especially the selectric.

This is the AT keyboard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's better, but the delete key is small (1 key width rather than 1.5) and the caps lock is in the wrong place for someone trained on a selectric. Which was just about everyone.

This is the mighty Model M:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's better even if the return key is small, the only way to make the return key bigger would be to shrink the pipe/backslash to 1 keywidth rather than the 1.5.

Different (key)strokes for different folks

[Overzeetop]

I use the capslock all the time. Of course I'm an engineer and I switch between documents (regular case) and drawings (all upper case) so it gets a pretty big workout. Gotta say the same for my right mouse button - and the center scroll, tool. NumLock, though - that's a pretty rare beast for me; typically only gets used when it's accidentally turned off.

i use caps lock a lot !

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm an i3 user, and i've overriden the caps_lock key to serve as a function key
i use it to assign unique keyboard combinations for the window manager

flawed?

[Espectr0]

I didn't read the article (this is slashdot after all), but if it's a chrome plugin, would that register key presses outside the browser? The caps key is basically never used in a browser. On my job, users rely on caps lock to type into forms inside our iseries system.

In my opinion the least used key is the scroll lock and the pause key

No One Knows What to Put There Instead

[ewhac]

You'd prefer this, maybe?

That abomination was the keyboard Lenovo inflicted on the world on their Thinkpad Carbon X1 (2nd. gen). This presumably was green-lit by the same Very Serious People who approved the bundling of the SuperFish on "select" laptops.

Lenovo seems to have since learned their lesson; the Carbon X1 3rd gen has a proper keyboard, and proper buttons above the touchpad.

Re:No One Knows What to Put There Instead

[SuricouRaven]

But what if the user needs to type the weird bent line on the key beneath escape?

Slashdot won't accept it, as it has no ASCII character any more and some sites still don't get the UTF-8 thing.

Re:No One Knows What to Put There Instead

[CronoCloud]

You mean the tilde? " ~ "?

Slashdot accepts it just fine.

Re:No One Knows What to Put There Instead

[SuricouRaven]

No, the right-angle line.

Obligatory bash.org

[Junta]

http://bash.org/?835030

That aside, just don't screw with things. You mention caps lock, which I don't use, but any change is likely to just screw with muscle memory and not have any practical benefit except as some symbolic gesture against caps lock. For example, see second gen X1 carbon which replaced caps lock with home and end keys.

There is also the troubling by the way mention of the right mouse button. For the love of god do not advocate screwing with the right mouse button. You don't often need it, but when you do, all the schemes that try to de-emphasize it's footprint really screw with you and again *nothing of value is gained*.

Re:Obligatory bash.org

[Lab Rat Jason]

Twice in the same thread I've pined for mod points... that bash.org link is hilarious!

Re:Obligatory bash.org

[Dutch Gun]

Agreed. I wouldn't change a thing. I spend my time worrying about my current project or my programming skills, not the layout of my keyboard. I internalized key positions decades ago, and I don't see any real benefit in trying to relearn what I've already got down pat.

There are a lot of slightly sub-optimal things in our lives that hang around due to simple inertia. The "pain in the ass" factor of learning a new keyboard layout probably outweighs potential efficiencies of completely or partially relearning how to touch-type. Most of us don't rely on maximum efficiency when typing, unless you happen to have a very specialized job in which you type a *lot*. A slightly more efficient layout probably won't make any substantial difference for most of us.

As a practical matter, choosing a non-standard keyboard layout is going to greatly inconvenience you in many ways. You'll have a dramatically limited selection of keyboards to choose from, and you're going to have problems every time you need to temporarily use someone else's standard qwerty keyboard.

Re:Obligatory bash.org

[radarskiy]

"any change is likely to just screw with muscle memory"

But it is already a change. I've been using computers long enough that I remember when it was a control key.

Re:Obligatory bash.org

[AmiMoJo]

I switch between English and Japanese keyboards every day. I don't find it a problem, I got used to it fairly quickly. The Japanese keyboard has a lot of differences to the UK one, like all the shift characters on the number row and most of the ones next to the enter key.

Re:Obligatory bash.org

[bidule]

You mention caps lock, which I don't use, but any change is likely to just screw with muscle memory and not have any practical benefit except as some symbolic gesture against caps lock.

Do it for the children!

CAPS-LOCK

[mwvdlee]

Obviously caps-lock is the least used key. you press it only once after boot, then no more.

Mangled IRC joke

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Dude1:"HI GUYS! HOW IS EVERYONE?"

Dude2:"Hey. Doing okay. You?"

Dude1:"COULDN'T BE BETTER! ANYTHING GOING ON?"

Dude2:"There's a caps lock key on your keyboard, press it."

Dude1"OH! THANK YOU! IT'S SO MUCH EASIER TYPING NOW NOT HAVING TO HOLD SHIFT."

Re:Mangled IRC joke

[GroeFaZ]

http://bash.org/?835030 is what you're looking for.

Give me my Home key back

[dave562]

On the newer Latitude laptops, Dell moved the Home and End keys down onto the arrow keys and made them Fn enabled. It is really frustrating because I often use Home and End when editing text, often in conjunction with Shift or Control to manipulate large blocks of text.

This of course has nothing to do with TFA, but this is /. and I need to rant damn it.

Re:Give me my Home key back

[xlsior]

For a (short) while years ago Microsoft tried redesigning their keyboard layout as well, and in their infinite wisdom they got rid of the normal 'insert' key -- instead they gave you a double-height 'delete' key, and the 'Insert' functionality became a 3rd feature of the printscreen/sysreq button, provided you're in Microsoft Office. On all of their keyboard lines at the same time: 'standard', 'office', 'gaming' and 'ergonomic'.

The big problem with that: no more "shift-insert" shortcut to paste text, and it's -very- hard to break that habit.

Luckily, their experiment didn't last very long and they've since switched back to a standard keyboard layout.

Re:Give me my Home key back

[JakartaDean]

On the newer Latitude laptops, Dell moved the Home and End keys down onto the arrow keys and made them Fn enabled. It is really frustrating because I often use Home and End when editing text, often in conjunction with Shift or Control to manipulate large blocks of text.

This of course has nothing to do with TFA, but this is /. and I need to rant damn it.

Unfortunately, I use the Home key every time I load a /. page. Why only this fscking site jumps to somewhere arbitrarily near the end of the page after loading is mysterious, and very annoying.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Kkloe]

i am more frustrated that *nix systems doesnt make a use of it, and just map the same stuff as windows where applicable, its like, we see you have a keyboard with the windows key, all of them?), lets not make use of it and let the user map it themself

irony

[ThatsNotPudding]

no way to argue for caps lock, what with the lameness filter.

"...neat statistics"

[xanthines-R-yummy]

I agree it's pretty neat, but do they have this data in a more readable form? As in one, that doesn't have a million cartoon images interspersed with one sentence? I don't mean to be a crank, but I found it difficult to read. Even more so than the regular site!

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Pseudonymous Powers]

I started using computers regularly in the time before the "Windows" key was added to the keyboard. So, when it appeared, I refused to use it, out of pique. These days I am always very angry when I do press it, because what I mean to press instead is always either Alt or Ctrl. I personally feel that adding a third key to that set makes it a confusing mess. I initially thought that most users would feel the same way, and that the key would quietly go away when the next year's keyboards came out.

But a lot of people seem to like it, so I guess that's never happening. I will say that, even on Windows, there's usually an alternate keyboard shortcut that makes its use unnecessary.

What I'd really like is some simple and commonly available system that lets you re-map or disable any key on the keyboard at will. That's another problem that I thought would have been fixed by now, but it never really seems to ever become very practical.

Military Reports

[taliesinangelus]

A lot of military reports and first responder reports are still written in all caps.

Definitely not the least used key

[sjbe]

Keys that never get used ever because they are no longer useful:
Sys Rq
Scroll Lock
Pause/Break

Let's put Caps Lock where Scroll Lock is currently. Caps Lock is occasionally useful but the key word is occasionally. Most of the time it is just annoying and it is WAY too prominent on the keyboard.

Personally I'd get rid of the Windows key too since I never ever use it but I know some people actually do. Freaks... ;-)

Re:Definitely not the least used key

[BorgAssimilator]

I don't use the SysRq key too often, but when I'm working with a kernel that's having issues those magic system request combos become really useful.

I've also become aware that the Pause/Break key is used in the windows command prompt. (I recently had the unfortunate experience of creating a python/django application on windows...)

Re:Definitely not the least used key

[mattventura]

They're niche but still used, apart from scroll lock which I really can't seem to think of a use case for. Sometimes you need Pause/Break to stop BIOS output because a lot of BIOSes (especially newfangled UEFI ones) blow past important things faster than your monitor can wake up. SysRq still has a use as the magic SysRq key.

Re:Definitely not the least used key

[IcyWolfy]

So, inconvenience entire countries because US english doesn't use it.

Or what about doing away with the # key, because it's rarely used. (On bristish english keyboards, the # is it's own key. Shift-# = ~; Shift-` (backtick) = (not) )

Several Keyboard layouts have 4 shift states. CAPS !== SHIFT.
See Czech and Swiss German for common examples.

the upper row of CZ are letters.
SHIFT gets you 123457890
CAPS: gets uppercased letters
CAPS-Shift: numbers again

Swiss:
Shift ü = è
CAPS ON: Shift Ü = È

If you get rid of the caps lock, you'll have to introduce a common dual-state key for the dozens of languges that require it.
n other layouts, CAPS switches between national language script, and latin letter script (which is pretty much required now if you ever want to type a URL)

Re:Definitely not the least used key

[tepples]

I press Alt+SysRq+REISUB, waiting for disk activity to end after each key, maybe once every few months to reboot a wedged Linux PC. Some PC games use the Pause key for its labeled purpose. And someone else wrote a comment to this story suggesting making a PC game that uses Scroll Lock to keep thieves from stealing items in your tool belt (hotbar).

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[T.E.D.]

Just curious, what OS are you using?

On both Windows and Linux, it's a pretty handy key.

On Windows 8 (I haven't tried 10 yet), its pretty much required, unless you do something goofy like place an icon for every program you might ever want to use on your desktop. Its the "help me find a program" key. If you'd rather search your hard-drive manually, its still much quicker to bring up file explorer with Windows-e rather than hunt down a picture of it on your desktop (closing any possible obscuring windows) and click that.

Colemak

[fwarren]

On the Colemak keyboard layout the Caps Lock has been assigned to work as a 2nd backspace key. This would be much more useful if I remembered to use it.

Dvorak.

[briancox2]

This is the opportunity the obscure Dvorak Keyboard crowd has been waiting for to finally fix the layout of keys.

Organize now. Latch on to this issue. Or you'll miss your chance.

Why is the caps-lock key so prominent?

[DeathToBill]

To give you a nice, big, easy-to-reach key you can remap to Control.

Re:Why is the caps-lock key so prominent?

[skastrik]

Good one. But left-alt is easier to reach.
On my main work computer I have swapped L-ctlr and L-alt via registry scancode map. Prior to that I had started to develop left-pinky-copy-paste syndrome, fixed now.

Here's why:

[wirefarm]

CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re: My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards

[aristotle-dude]

One handed usage when reading a long document.

Do you fap to Business requirements documents?

Nooooooooo

[roc97007]

Oh goodie, another standard keyboard layout. Because getting rid of the "esc" key and putting an additional key in the bottom row worked so well for DEC.

But getting used to yet another keyboard layout... I'll leave that to the keyboard experimenters. I have actual work to do.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Ksevio]

On OSX it's the Apple key which is also very useful.

The context menu key on the other hand...

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Fire_Wraith]

I find that I use it constantly for two things (aside from start menu access): Windows+E = Brings up File Manager/Windows Explorer Windows+L = Lock screen in one keypress (rather than two using the C-A-D plus mouse click)

Get a screwdriver

[jafiwam]

Get a screwdriver and just pry the damn thing off the keyboard.

Same with the windows and menu keys. You can still press them by poking something in there (often a pinky works).

Why Is the Caps Lock Key Still So Prominent On Key

[Rob Riggs]

SO THE OLD GEEZERS WHO ONLY GREW UP WITH TELETYPE MACHINES CAN COMMUNICATE WITH ONE ANOTHER.

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

WHAT'S THAT YOU SAY?

Windows key = useless to me

[sjbe]

On both Windows and Linux, it's a pretty handy key.

Depends on your workflow. I never use it. If you are someone who really never wants to take your hands off the keyboard I get it but I'm not that person so it sits lonely and unused on my keyboard. Only time I ever press it is by accident or if for some reason I'm forced to use Windows 8 (shudder).

Re:Windows key = useless to me

[IcyWolfy]

The Windows key is pretty damned useful in day-to-day activities:
I for one make use of:

Windows - LEFT, Windows - RIGHT : Snap half-screen left / Move to next Monitor;
Windows - UP, Windows DOWN : Maximize, Minimize
Windows SHIFT UP, Win-Shift-Down : Maximize/Restore Vertical only. (Width stays the same, only window height maximizes/restores)
Windows - Print Screen: Screenshot and save to file
Windows - X : Power Menu (Admin Command Promt, Control Panel, Shutdown/Hibernate/Sleep, etc)
Windows : Windows 8 Screen (Start typing to search for application to run)
Windows - L : Lock Screen (I use this at work, not at home)
Windows - P : Second Monitor Mode (Duplicate, Mirror, Laptop Only, Second Monitor Only)
Windows - D : Show Desktop (Minimize All) / If you don't need to open a new app, a second press will undo the minimize all
Windows - SPACE : Keyboard Language Selector (Probably not useful for americans); I use it for Intl Dvorak, US English, JP IME
    Windows - / : IME Recovert (Good for ZH, JP, KR)
Windows - E : New File Explorer Window
Windows - R : [ No longer useful - Open RUN box; Windows-SPACE has fully replaced this by allowing full text-search of all installed applications]
Windows - PAUSE : Bring up System Properties Screen (usually for debugging hardware issues, or seeing stats)
Windows - 1, 2, 3, 4 : (effectively click) Open/Switch to application pinned on task bar at position 1, 2, 3, 4...
Windows Shift - 1, 2, 3, 4: (effective shift-click) New instance of pinned task-bar application at specificed location
          [ These two I only use Windows 2, to open my IDE; pretty much everything else I just use Windows + (start typing app name) ]
Windows - Alt - Enter : Open Windows Media Center

Alt-Tab : Cycle through open windows
AltGr-Tab : Use keyboard to cycle through all windows in pop-up window; enter to actually switch. (Apparently, americans can use Ctrl-Alt-Tab for this)

  And there are many more Windows-Key shortcuts that I don't use; or probably don't even know about.

Re:Windows key = useless to me

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Wait until you have a kid. Windows L becomes VERY useful at home. Also good for curious hacker kitties.

Re:Windows key = useless to me

[Sowelu]

Windows-R is a very nice shortcut for bringing up the run box. Clicking the start button is a mild pain (especially if you have a monitor to the left of your main monitor), ctrl-esc is an extra button to hit...and the 'run' in the start menu in Windows 7 isn't even a normal run thing, it's a search window that happens to let you run things too. You can't scroll through command history. I actually don't know if there's any way to open the run box with a mouse! I can't find it if there is.

Re: Windows key = useless to me

[greenlead]

Don't forget the new WIN + X shortcut (or right clicking start button)! It gives a handy menu with most of the programs you need for everyday Windows administration. It nice of them to think of those of us who have to do daily touch maintenance on desktop computers.

Re:Windows key = useless to me

[mvdw]

I use an old IBM Model M keyboard with no windows key; under OSX I remap the caps-lock key to command; under windows I don't miss not having the windows key. Many of those shortcuts you have listed have alternate shortcuts; the ones that don't could be useful to me if I had a windows key, but I'd rather type on my model M than some mushy newfangled piece of crap. Under Linux, ctrl-alt serves the purpose of the windows key, and the linux desktop is much more flexible than windows for using the keyboard anyway.

Necessary for the forums

[k6mfw]

SO YOU CAN TELL PEOPLE WHAT YOU REALLY THINK

and probably for those steeped in tradition of the KSR machines
P 27Ø159Z AUG 2Ø12
FM NNNØGHA TWO AL
TO NNNØAVL ALABAMA
INFO NNNØAS4 GA
BT
UNCLAS
SUBJ: TROPICAL STORM ISAAC - COMCON THREE
A. ALABAMA ECOM PLAN OF 22 FEB Ø7
BT

Short answer ...

[gstoddart]

Because the world doesn't want every idiot who thinks he's made a better keyboard constantly mucking about with stuff for the sake of it.

Some of us have been typing for decades, and simply don't care that you think it's time to redesign the keyboard.

"It's time to make some changes to keyboards" -- No, that's your opinion, it isn't fact.

You want a custom keyboard, buy it or make it. But don't be such an arrogant ass as to assume we give a damn about you whining about it. We don't need some damned keyboard designed by a fucking committee.

What a stupid article.

frickin' useless POS that makes everything suck

[swschrad]

its counterpart in the Apple world, the splat key, is extremely useful, however.

Backslash right above enter.

[GungaDan]

Me and my sausage fingers would LOVE to see the backslash key moved even just a few millimeters farther from the enter key. I don't know how many times I've gone to enter a command and I catch the backslash just before the enter, dropping me to > .

Consistency for Home, End, PgUp, PgDown, Delete

[essbase_nerd]

I couldn't care less about the Caps Lock. I rarely use it, but it doesn't bother me.

My frustration is when I use different keyboards, and the Home, End, PgUp, PgDown, and Delete keys are in different places, or are shaped differently (double height delete key, for example). The same goes for arrow keys.

I use the HELL out of the Right Click Context key on my keyboard. I've noticed that Logitech has been replacing that key with a FN key to switch the purpose of F1-F12 to other stupid things no one cares about.

I also use the crap out of the Windows key to start searches or enter UNC paths to get to network resources quickly. Though if it wasn't there, I would learn and use it's alternative shortcut key.

No.

[Qzukk]

Don't swap the control and alt keys, please. I have to press ^A, ^X, ^C and those are going to be absolutely awkward if the keys are right under each other. Put it where the capslock key is now, so ^A is just shifting my fingers a key left.

Re:No.

[fustakrakich]

That also works. I'm just used to the Mac, and to me, the Command and Control keys should be in the same place on their respective keyboards. It was more comfortable to use with my thumb.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[SuricouRaven]

It's also known as the 'agh-bring-me-back-my-game-I-just-grabbed-the-flag!' key.

Compose key

[Florian Weimer]

It's generally useless, but fairly convenient to reach, so it makes perfect sense to map it to the Compose key instead.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[SuricouRaven]

There are a few such combinations.
Win-P switches dual display mode.
Win-D (Aka 'boss key' or 'teacher key') minimises all windows. A second use restores them.

I guess I'm in the minority.

[MaWeiTao]

MacBook... No wonder so few people use the right-click button. For me, that right-click is indispensable. It would hinder productivity to lose it, and people would be smart to learn how to take advantage of it. The capslock key is useful too, although less so because many page layout applications now allow you to set text as all caps. Although having that key available is sometimes quicker.

Speed and efficiency is what it comes down to. Just because most users do things a certain way doesn't mean they're doing it properly. I see coworkers constantly doing things inefficiently because they can't be bothered to do a simple online search to find a better approach. It's shocking, actually, because I've seen people stressed out, spending full days to do tasks that should take maybe an hour.

The point of input devices shouldn't be to strip them down to their bare useable minimum. I don't think we need over-designed keyboards with a million buttons, but there is a sensible middle ground that offers reasonable functionality. Removing an underused capslock key isn't going improve anyone's experience, but it will hurt those for whom it's useful. This is not to say I'm opposed to redesigns, but I think they have to be applied holistically and be sensible.

Prime space

[sjbe]

You mention caps lock, which I don't use, but any change is likely to just screw with muscle memory and not have any practical benefit except as some symbolic gesture against caps lock.

You'll get over it. Caps lock needs to be deprecated and relocated. Besides it's not like all keyboards are identical, particularly on laptops. Caps lock takes up lots of space that could be better used. Personally I'd put Home and End in its place or maybe volume controls or perhaps browser forward/back controls.

Re:Prime space

[IcyWolfy]

Several Keyboard layouts have 4 shift states. CAPS !== SHIFT.
See Czech and Swiss German for common examples.

the upper row of CZ are letters.
SHIFT gets you 123457890
CAPS: gets uppercased letters
CAPS-Shift: numbers again

Swiss:
Shift ü = è
CAPS ON: Shift Ü = È

If you get rid of the caps lock, you'll have to introduce a common dual-state key for the dozens of languges that require it.
In other layouts, CAPS switches between national language script, and latin letter script (which is pretty much required now if you ever want to type a URL)

Sticking with a 1982 design

[Locke2005]

I have a different (possibly more stupid) question: why are computer numeric keypads and phone keypads reversed from each other? This gets even worse when entering your pin for a bank; I've seen both layouts used by banks. I think the answer is, "That's the way we've always done it!" Somebody made an arbitrary and capricious decision many years ago, and nobody has had the wherewithall to change it. Another "standard" that bothers me: In the transition to digital video, they had the chance to do away with the PAL/NTSC dual-standard nonsense... but they still chose to support both 50 and 60 FPS video?!? As I understand, even 4K video comes in both 50 and 60 frames per second variety, because obviously we still need to synchronize our video to our AC line current...

Re:Sticking with a 1982 design

[swb]

Whaddya bet that the variation in video formats got left in as some kind of poor DRM to act as a last-chance method to stop people from viewing videos from other regions?

Re:Sticking with a 1982 design

[Ashtead]

From what I remember, the numerical keypads with 789 on the top row were inherited from ancient calculating machines, not entirely unlike the QWERTY ordering of the keyboard -- it was the way it was laid out and as it wasn't broke no-one ever bothered to fix it. There were some mechanical reasons for this originally, then it carried over to electronic calculator keyboards and then their descendants, the computers.

The phones keypad pedigree is different: from various circular dials that opened and closed a switch a number of times corresponding to the number the user wanted to dial, the keypads that replaced the dials got the numbers in a natural top-to-bottom ascending order, usually with keys organized in a 3 wide 4 tall matrix.

Re:Sticking with a 1982 design

[stephows]

The phone standards created the phone keypad way back in the first half of the 20th century but it didn't become well known until the 1970s when actual hardware reached the mass market. The electronic calculator and computer market knew nothing about the phone standards, so they made their own version and started selling it in the 1960s. Possibly they copied the last generation of mechanical calculator layouts but in the real early days of mechanical calculators (when the telephone standard was designed) these had multiple lines of 1...9 and 0. By the time each knew about each other, neither wanted to change. So now we live with both.

Re:Sticking with a 1982 design

[tepples]

why are computer numeric keypads and phone keypads reversed from each other?

DTMF keypads have 1 on top because 9 was next to 0 on rotary dial telephones, in turn because 0 was encoded as ten pulses. Computer numeric keypads are descended from mechanical adding machines, which have higher numbers up top.

Another "standard" that bothers me: In the transition to digital video, they had the chance to do away with the PAL/NTSC dual-standard nonsense... but they still chose to support both 50 and 60 FPS video?!?

Mostly for movies (which may be 24 or 25 fps per country) and upscaled SD programs embedded in a high-definition stream. Also for the same reason as DVD and BD region coding, namely to continue to enforce decades-old territorial exclusive licenses that specify the "PAL region" (mostly defined as Europe, Australia, and New Zealand).

Make it MORE important, not less.

[Mal-2]

Right now, CapsLock does one thing. You tap it, and toggle the state of the Caps Lock function. Why not make it do more than one thing, namely by giving it a different function when held down? Perhaps it can act something like AltGr. I personally a held-down CapsLock to generate small caps (via Unicode, so I can't demonstrate here) thanks to AutoHotkey.

I also have other overlapping assignments, such as the AppsKey (aka "Menu Key", which may or may not be what they're calling the "Right Mouse Button" in the article). Tap it and it does the usual. Hold it down and it generates lookalike characters if any exist for that key (otherwise it generates nothing, so you know you didn't get a lookalike), such as a Cyrillic a or capital letters from the Greek alphabet. Why? Because of wordfilters. I encountered one that liked to change all instances of "moot" to "cuck", but it did so with no regard to the characters around the string. Thus the word "smooth" became "scuckh". I dodge this by substituting Cyrillic o in place of one or both of the ones in the word. Another wordfilter I've encountered changes all instances of "wing" to "wang", including when it's part of the word "swing". Time to bust out the Byelorussian "i".

Another option is to map CapsLock to Ctrl (as many people do), or to Backspace (as is the norm in Colemak). I actually use it though, now that it has the additional Small Caps function. I tried the Backspace assignment, but found myself not using it, and now I have a duplicate Backspace to the left of the Left Shift.

Other funky double assignments: NumLock sends a Ctrl-Enter, but only in Skype, otherwise it behaves normally. My numeric keypad is also paired up differently and uses all five rows:

/, 7-PrtSc, 8-ScrLk, 9-Pause
*, 4-Ins, 5-Home, 6-PgUp
-, 1-Del, 2-End, 3-PgDn
+, 0-Ins, Up Arrow, .-Del
Ctrl, Left Arrow, Down Arrow, Right Arrow

You can take a look if you really want to.

Re:Make it MORE important, not less.

[IcyWolfy]

In other layouts it does different things.
Swiss German and Czech; they have four states
NONE; SHIFT; CAPS; CAPS-SHIFT.
shift ü = è
CAPS ON: Shift-Ü = È

Czech: The number row is actually all letters. ; to get the numbers 1234567890; you have to use shift.
Caps Lock: the top row are now uppercased; shift still gets you the numbers.

In some non-latin based layouts:
Caps-Lock toggles between national script, and latin script (so you can say, type in a URL, or otherwise use the internet that demands usernames be a-z when the letters a-z don't even exist on the keyboard....; people in these markets often allow usernames, passwords, etc in local script; rather than "english letters")

Re:Make it MORE important, not less.

[Mal-2]

In other layouts it does different things.
Swiss German and Czech; they have four states
NONE; SHIFT; CAPS; CAPS-SHIFT.
shift ü = è
CAPS ON: Shift-Ü = È

Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator calls this "SGCAP", presumably meaning "Swiss German CapsLock". For a while I was using this to access the lookalike characters, but that was before I started using AutoHotkey. I never used it for the entry of characters with accents and other diacritical marks, as I feel that's a role better served by dead keys and modifiers. (I don't normally bother on "rôle", but I do on "résumé" and "façade", and on names.)

So yeah, this is probably the primary reason CapsLock hasn't gone anywhere – various regional mappings have already addressed this problem, in a variety of ways. Those devoted to English never did, because it simply isn't necessary. This ties right back into my answer, which is to put it to better use like much of the non-English world does.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[TWX]

They're only useful because everyone got lazy about the existing modifier keys. We already had two in the form of Control and Alternate, and yet we still introduced another for Apple (Command/Apple) and two for the PC (Window and Menu).

One Shift Key to rule them all...

[DarthVain]

First of all how am I supposed to yell at people online without the capslock key?

Second, I think most people use the right mouse button all the time regardless of whatever your stupid study says.

However on point for this, it might save some IT calls where people are trying to enter in their passwords, and do not notice that capslock is on... Happens so often that many applications have a built in reminder to check that it is indeed off when trying to enter passwords...

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[TWX]

When we played the original DOS-based DOOM under Windows 95 in order to have the network stack we called them "lamer keys". I had two keyboards that I'd pried off the keys and made my own covers to blank them out.

Use alternate keyboard mapping

[koinu]

I altered the keymap so all keys are more useful. Caps lock is escape which I need quite frequently in vim. I have 105 keys (physical German layout) and I would like to have more keys, not less.

I remap mine

[jomcty]

I remap my CapsLock key to be a Control key; and RShift-CapsLock to invoke the original caps-lock function.

Looking at my 4000 pro:

[brokenin2]

I think I would remove:
caps lock (standard)
print screen (standard)
scroll lock (standard)
the entire numeric keypad (standard)
insert (standard)

alternate functions for the "F" keys, so they're just F1-F12 again (non-standard)
F-lock key (non-standard)
web/Home (non-standard)
search (non-standard)
mail (non-standard)
1,2,3,4,5,Calculator (non-standard)
zoom (non-standard)
My favorites (non-standard)

I would keep:
mute, volume up, volume down, play/pause (non-standard) ...and add "next track" and "previous track"

I would keep "back" and "forward" ...and add a joystick where "zoom" is that covers scroll up, down, left and right

I would have to look at what's left to figure out what would go where caps-lock was.. maybe home and end.
Then you would just have delete, page up and page down above the arrows, and media keys crammed in above that..

Much smaller keyboard and still great for my purposes without cramming things together and making it cramped.

If someone wants a numeric keypad, I would just buy a separate device.

Yeah.. I'm so going to have to get myself something that's 100% customizable if I'm ever going to get close to what I want. The problem is I really like the physical layout of the main keys on the 4000 pro.... Split keyboard with a slight seagull like affect.. Everything feels like it's in its most natural position.

We should replace the key with...

[gurps_npc]

a ".com" key. Which shifts to .org and alts to .net and I wouldn't mind a button that sends focus tot he url address bar and another to the search bar.

Re:We should replace the key with...

[gurps_npc]

What makes you think I was talking about the address bar? I want to be able to use that when I type in my email/login id into fields.

And the existence of those control characters prove we need the character key.

What - you think that something that we DON'T already have a control character for sure get it's own key???

Flawed?

[wardrich86]

The caps lock only needs to be pressed twice per string of text. Once to turn it on, once to turn it off. That means, I could hit the caps lock and type out 500 E's. That would be +500 E, but only +2 for capslock. If he really wants to bicker, he should have complained about the Scroll Lock. That button is on the verge of death.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[TheRaven64]

Control and alternate already have well-defined meanings. Control is for entering control characters, alternate is for entering alternate characters. OS X uses both. UNIX keyboards used to come with a meta key, but this fell out of use as software was written for PCs without such a key. On OS X, the usage of the command key is inherited from classic MacOS: It's the modifier that you hold for commands. This means that the OS X terminal is the only graphical terminal that I've come across that doesn't suck for copy and paste. On OS X, every single program including the terminal uses command-C for copy and command-V for paste. The terminal is therefore free to use control-C for sending the character that they terminal recognises for SIGINT. Windows overloaded the alternate key for opening menus, which meant that it is no longer a convenient key if you need to enter non-ASCII characters (for example, a Euro symbol or a letter with an accent, which are both easy to enter on a Mac). Most desktop environments for Linux inherited a load of bad UI design from Windows before adding their own mistakes.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[TheRaven64]

Windows-R brings up the run dialog, which will autocomplete program names and used to be the fastest way of launching programs on Windows (it's well over 10 years since I last regularly used Windows, so I don't know if this has changed). Windows-D showed the desktop and Windows-F the system find dialog. All of these were pretty useful, but the key was still quite under-utilised.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[serviscope_minor]

I never understood the hate for the Windows key. Well, sure as a youthful Linux user I was snobbish when it was introduced, but after mapping it to something useful I started disliking keyboards without it.

What I'd really like is some simple and commonly available system that lets you re-map or disable any key on the keyboard at will.

xmodmap works well for basic key remapping. If you want to do funky stuff like make it per-keyboard instead of global (useful for UK/US keyboard differences for example) then setxkbmap is really handy.

You can pseudo-disable a key by mapping it to None. It has minor effects, like triggering a key event but it will never do anything.

Of course that only works on X based systems, but it's really handy.

Caps Lock use

[eldorin]

There are still places where the use of Caps is mandatory and used on a daily basis. I work for a telephone company in Alaska and all the phone switches back end access requires all the commands to be entered in Caps. True, the use is rare and limited, but there is still a use for the Caps Lock.

Re:Caps Lock use

[IcyWolfy]

Use of the caps lock is very common in Switzerland, nad Czech Republic.
Because in many layouts SHIFT != CAPS

Swiss German and Czech; they have four states
NONE; SHIFT; CAPS; CAPS-SHIFT.
shift ü = è
CAPS ON: Shift-Ü = È

Czech: The number row is actually all letters. ; to get the numbers 1234567890; you have to use shift.
Caps Lock: the top row are now uppercased; shift still gets you the numbers.

Some non-latin layouts use CAPS to toggle between national characters, and latin-letters. (so caps lock on, gives lowercase latin-alpha); caps-lock off gives you lower-case cyrillic.

I remove it

[Verdatum]

Every new keyboard I use, first thing I do is pluck the capslock key out so I don't hit it by mistake. I tape it to the back in case anyone else ever needs it. I basically never miss it.

Re: My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards

[TheRaven64]

When I'm reading a document, I'll do two-fingered scrolling on the trackpad to navigate. I only use home/end and page up/down when I'm typing, to navigate within the document, and then I already have both of my hands on the keyboard. The function key can be pressed with the knuckle of the little finger of the left hand, so is pretty easy to hit.

Remapping Caps Lock On OSX

[LihTox]

It's actually really easy to turn Caps Lock into Control (or Command) on OSX; it's in the Keyboard preference panel, under the button "Modifier Keys".

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Kiaser Zohsay]

You will not take my context menu key until you pry it from my cold dead fingers. I use that thing constantly. Maybe I use applications that hide an inordinate amount of functionality under the context menu (including my own). I really try to avoid moving my hands from the keyboard to the mouse (and back) until I absolutely have to, so I'm all about keyboard shortcuts. The context menu key is a handy one, for me at least.

Shrink Caps Lock, increase shift.

[GoJays]

In Canada, some laptops ship with French/English Keyboards. For some reason, hardware manufactures thought it was ok to shrink the left shift key to half of the normal size. As a touch typist this drives me insane as I end up typing a backslash instead of hitting shift for an uppercase letter. If anything they should use backslash just to the left of the "a" and shrink caps lock and not shift.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Kiaser Zohsay]

Windows+L sounds pretty handy. I didn't know that one. You can also lock with Ctrl-Alt-Del and then Alt-K, to avoid having to grab the mouse.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[mattventura]

On top of opening the start menu, there's tons of Win-letter combinations. Win-R is Run, Win-E is explorer, Win-D shows the desktop, Win-M minimizes all windows. Win-1,2,n launches the 1st, 2nd, nth program pinned to your taskbar. Win-arrows move windows around on the screen and Win-shift-arrows move windows between different monitors. There's plenty of others that I don't remember. It's actually pretty inconvenient to not have a windows key once you're used to it.

U and I

[CresCoJeff]

My dear, I would put 'U' and 'I' together (I use a right-handed Dvorak)

Seriously though, I'd recommend ditching caps lock, tab, insert, num lock, home, end, page up, page down, scroll lock, pause/break, and roll the delete and backspace keys into a single delete key. Then make all the remaining ones bigger. I'd also take the damnable Windows logo off the command key and just refer to it as CMD across operating systems.

Re:U and I

[OrangeTide]

I don't need arrow keys, so get rid of those too.

I use tab key, because it's inconvenient to type space exactly 8 times. (or 4 times or whatever your preference. given that 1080p can comfortably fit 120x54 terminal, using 8 space tabs doesn't seem like a big deal.

Re:U and I

[Teckla]

Seriously though, I'd recommend ditching caps lock, tab, insert, num lock, home, end, page up, page down, scroll lock, pause/break, and roll the delete and backspace keys into a single delete key.

As a software developer, I'd be pretty unhappy not having keys dedicated to caps lock, tab, home, end, page up, page down, delete, and backspace.

I'd also take the damnable Windows logo off the command key and just refer to it as CMD across operating systems.

I like this idea.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[MightyYar]

I think you need to look at the first Mac keyboard. There was no "control" key. Just the Command and Option keys. The Command key was for keyboard shortcuts and the Option key was to enter special characters (accents, extra symbols, etc). They later added the "Control" key where the caps lock key is typically located now and moved "caps lock" to a tiny button next to the space bar. This was done to be compatible with terminal applications.

Better than the Menu key

[OrangeTide]

I use my caps lock as much as the windows key / command key / super key, and both I use more than the other windows key (menu key?)

CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL

[bistromath007]

But really though, I use it all the time. It's good for acronyms for a start.

I notice you're not talking about getting rid of RMB. That would obviously be stupid. People who know what they're doing and do alot of it get a great deal out of 0.1% use cases.

Back in the day...

[rossdee]

Back in the day the CAPSLock key used to have a red LED on it that was lit when it was on.
Of course that made the keyboards more expensive to produce - they cost 10 x what they do today.
And the key next to the A key was the control key

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[hackwrench]

The Windows key does nothing on Windows 3.11

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[ArhcAngel]

I never understood the hate for the Windows key.

Then you've never played a FPS on a PC. It would be one thing if the key could be disabled while you are doing a specific task but short of editing the registry it just sits there...mocking you; Waiting for just the right moment when you line up your shot and BAM your looking at the desktop.

Require Shift+CapsLock instead

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to fix the "problem", require an explicit shift modifier. (Or some other layout appropriate modifier) It even makes conceptual sense. Use shift to uppercase a letter. Use shift+lock to lock in that caps.

Simple. Problem solved. You're welcome, Inter Net.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[houghi]

It depends per user. Coming from Linux, I use keys a lot more than other people do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

That said, I just bought a Roccat Tyon and am using 12 buttons on a regular basis. Note: I am not a gamer.

Having programable buttons on a mouse is great. As a keyboard I have a Happy Hacker keyboard. So no easily accesible CapsLock there.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[radarskiy]

Are you telling me you have noting assigned to super or hyper? Do you have *anything* in your modmap?

Kids these days!

For Linux: Remap CapsLock to Compose

[houghi]

Just remap your Caps-Lock key to the Compose key.
http://fsymbols.com/keyboard/l...

Swap Caps Lock and Escape

[sdxxx]

I love the Caps Lock key. I just happen to swap it with Escape, which is very handy when using vi or many other programs (even bash, where some key combinations use Escape). I was very sad when Google got rid of it on some early Chromebooks. I think it's great that such a prime piece of keyboard real estate is unused, because it let's people repurpose it for whatever they want.

Another Function Key please

[xx_chris]

Would that the Caps Lock Key were repurposed as another Function Key.

As I type this on my MacBook Pro, I notice that ALL of the Function Keys are overloaded. What is so special about the Caps Lock Key that it wouldn't be overloaded? I usually end up disabling it: System Preferences>Keyboard>Keyboard>Modifiers Keys>Caps Lock>No Action. At least this prevents me from accidentally locking my caps which I NEVER EVER want to do.

Drinking Coffee

[kreuzotter]

The caps lock key is necessary when I have to type a password with upper case characters while holding my coffee mug. Don't get rid of it.

Re:It's IBM's fault. Everyone copied the PC.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sometime around 1985"? Actually a couple of years before that.

Listen' up, young uns, and I'll give you some history.

The computer world until the early 1980s was largely divided between the IBM EBCDIC/coax block mode terminals and ASCII/serial.

IBM block-mode (3278) keyboards had no CTRL key, and two return keys - one for typical carriage return when entering text, and the ENTER key to signal that all fields on the block-mode screen were filled and to transmit them. All the ASCII stuff including most of the original personal computers had the CTRL key in that position, or required a separate ASCII terminal. Some early ASCII terminals didn't even have backspace or return keys - you used CTRL-H and CTLM-M. Still works in many applications. Us old-timers were accustomed to it and could keep our hands in the touch typing position. Find your nearest proficient, old-timer vi user for a demo of how fast you can edit code with a properly placed CTRL key.

Then IBM came out with their PC. They had to add a CTRL key because lots of applications used it - Wordstar for instance. But they also wanted to sell it into the corporate IBM corporate customers. So they left the caps lock key where IBM terminal users expected it to be. And they tucked the CTRL key down below the shift key.

A truly wretched layout. But the IBM PC was a big hit, and everyone rushed to copy it.

You can still buy keyboards with a DIP switch to swap the CTRL and Caps Lock keys.

Tiny Arrow Keys?

[SeanDanielWeeks]

I'm tired of every other laptop having arrow keys that are so tiny and weak that it makes software development impossible. These, along with the Home and End buttons are my bread & butter. So who here knows the old alternative for Ctrl-C Ctrl-V that still works in almost every application? I like it even more than Ctrl-C/V.

Re:Tiny Arrow Keys?

[jonathan.e.bell]

I was actually using it this Monday to test a data entry screen I just made. Sometimes ctrl+ins/shift+ins is a good way to keep from wearing your hands out when you have a lot to move. Either way I like the variety, it diminishes RMS (whoop, used capsloc there)

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[dissy]

I started using computers regularly in the time before the "Windows" key was added to the keyboard. So, when it appeared, I refused to use it, out of pique.

I have to bring that statement into question.

If you really did use computers back in the day before Windows, you would already know that key - called Super - has existed since the 80s and was first removed on the IBM 8800 computer, which it remained missing until Microsoft requested keyboard manufacturers to put the Super key back and stick their logo on it.

Unix systems used and still use Super as an extra modifier similar to Hyper, Meta, Alt, AltGr, and Control.
The classic Macs used it as the "open apple" / command key, which was used for keyboard shortcuts leaving Control free to insert control characters as originally intended.
Sun had a dedicated key on the left-hand function keys.

LISP programmers have said they can't live without Meta.
Even emacs remaps the keycode back in for command shortcuts.

Personally when the key REappeared I was quite happy, as any cheap-o $10 keyboard would have similar functionality to any 104-key keyboard in the past, and no longer commanded higher prices to get.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Thanks, I may take a look at that. Though I suppose what has most discouraged me from trying key-remappers over the years is the fact that they're all "freeware", and my mind has a filter that automatically translates "freeware" to "download this registry-editing system utility from some scary filesharing site and then run it in administrator mode, we promise nothing bad will happen, heh heh". I used to think I could avoid being pwned by malware by only downloading such things from Sourceforge, but in our modern age of "special offers", that seems to no longer be the case.

No. It's useful.

[Cyberax]

I'm using CapsLock as a layout switching key, lots of other people use it as a second 'esc'.

And why would you remove it, anyway?

Re:Installed a simple Chrome plugin

[briancox2]

Tell us more about how you were able to install a keylogger as a Chrome extension. Please.

All Caps is Used a Lot in Programming

[Ketorin]

As a person who uses C-preprocessor extensively, I need my capslock key.

Jokes aside, I often program these industrial robots where basically every variable is a macro-define on bare memory address. The macro system doesn't know about tokens, but thankfully thinks case matters, so I use all caps on my variables to reduce name clashes.

For people with only one hand for typing?

[NeoMorphy]

I went six months without the use of my left hand because of an injury. During that time I used the "caps lock" key extensively. I know I'm not the only one who had to use it at some point in time. Some people will always need access to it.

Are you seriously hoping to make a change that will mess with the unfortunate because YOU don't require it? Maybe they should spend extra to get a special keyboard after the "caps lock" is removed? Was there a study done to see how many people use handicap ramps?

I use Caps Lock all the time...

[sudden.zero]

...Whenever I am programming it is very useful when creating Constant variables as the naming convention for such variables is all caps. I wonder if any surveys of key presses takes into account that caps lock, once pressed, is in use until it's pressed again. Therefore all keys pressed after Caps Lock is pressed, until it's pressed again, should also be counted in usage statistics (imho).

Re:I use Caps Lock all the time...

[eyenot]

Really?

You stop coding, press Capslock, resume coding, halt again to press Capslock again, and you think that's more efficient than keeping one pinky finger on Shift?

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Barefoot Monkey]

I find it very useful, but I truly HATE its position on the keyboard.

"Good Enough"

[Zcar]

The problem with reworking keyboard layouts is the current layouts are good enough. Good enough, in that most people have learned to type with them and are familiar with the layouts. Muck about with the layout much at all and there's a significant cost involved in adopting the new layout as these people's productivity decreases as their typing speeds decrease while adjusting to the new layout.

I don't think there's another keyboard layout out there (currently designed or possible) sufficiently better, objectively, to over come this.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Barefoot Monkey]

Yes! The context menu button is the best part of the 104 key layout. I use it very often, and it would be terrible to see it go.

Danger keys

[eyenot]

I categorize what I consider "danger keys" and have my endless bouts with them. A "danger key" is any key that carries a heavy burden of control over system ("heavy danger") or performance ("light danger").

Heavy danger keys include F1, F3, Escape, Break, and Delete.

Light danger keys include Capslock, F12, Insert, Shift, and Numlock.

Some of these dangers are clearly the fault of system developers at Microsoft. F1 didn't have to be chosen as a key that will slow your system down trying to open up Windows' top-heavy and useless help system. F3 didn't have to be chosen as a key that will slow your system down trying to open up Windows' top-heavy and useless search window. So those don't have to be danger keys, but they are. Whenever I accidentally press one of them I kick myself.

But other keys like Delete are hard to blame anyone for. Delete always means "remove something". If you aren't careful of where your focus is, that "something" could be a valuable file or one character out of a password.

The Break key is a holdover from pre-threaded computing. Windows users don't need it and CLI users probably don't want to ever have to press it, and certainly don't want to press it accidentally.

The Escape key is one I really hate. It's close to a key I actually use a lot, the Tilde/Gravemark. And because its location is more or less considered remote, programmers feel safe in continuing to make it a dangerous key to press. There should never be a key that I can accidentally press that will eliminate all the work I'm trying to do.

Capslock poses a threat to performance. I often type while looking at a paper or book, I'm trained to type quickly and accurately and I don't always look at the screen. There's nothing worse than looking up and seeing reversed case for paragraphs. Luckily I use an editor that has a "reverse case" feature, but it still hurts performance to have to go back and correct the error even with an instant fix like that. It hurts performance even if you catch it when it happens, pause, and click it again to go back.

F12 hurts performance because it is almost always associated with "full-screen view". Not all apps come out of full-screen well behaved. Hell, not all apps go into full-screen well behaved. Some apps lose some functionality in full-screen. Many apps lose important things like menu bars, status bars, and scroll bars. Many apps, when in full-screen, force themselves to be "always on top" which effectively robs you of your ability to change system focus. I prefer apps that put something heavy like full-screen view behind a two-key combination like Alt+Enter. I'd prefer if all programmers adopted the Alt+Enter combo for full-screen, because sometimes full-screen is something I enjoy over-using at certain moments, but it's not something I want to accidentally happen when I'm trying to type simple math or break a sentence with an emdash, or write an underscore.

Insert hurts performance because most text editors allow a single press of Insert to immediately change whether you're in over-write or insert mode. It doesn't get used for much else in my life but I feel like Shift+Insert would be a better match for something like that. I'd prefer Insert did something more like delete does, and insert a space after the carat. I could deal with that -- at the end of my day I'd just select and delete all the built-up trailing space at the end of my document. Most apps these days don't even effectively give you any sign of what mode you're in, so it's not like you have any way of knowing until you see something going horribly wrong. Go ahead and try it right now: hit "insert" and see if your carat changes to give you a visual cue of what mode you're in. It probably doesn't.

I'm also a fan of faint, special characters at the ends of lines showing whether there's a carriage return, a linefeed or both, but we can't have everything.

Shift hurts performance because of one thing and one thing only: "sticky keys". I often hesitate before forming a sentence

Re:Danger keys

[IcyWolfy]

Caps Lock assists in performance for all the language-specific layouts that rely on it to enter characters. (In these layouts, CAPS state, != SHIFT state; and thus yields a new CAPS+SHIFT state. See: Swiss German, Czech, ]

Others just use it to switch between national language, and latin characters (so caps is more a latin-lock, than caps lock). Which is becoming more required if one wants to type on the Internet which seems to assume that most people have the letters a-z on their keyboard....

Re:Danger keys

[Megane]

At work I have to use Windows. (At home I use a MacBook Pro so there are basically no danger keys.) While currently I only have the keycaps for F1 and INS removed, in the past I have also pulled F12, caps lock, and the Windows/menu keys. I just leave them in a small plastic bag next to the keyboard.

I don't know how you missed the Windows menu key, since it yanks focus away from your current program if it gets tapped by accident, then you have to waste time getting back to normal. It's almost as bad as F1.

The insert key is bad if you have an editor that tries to implement "overwrite mode" in a mouse-based text editor, which is pretty silly. It can also rarely get engaged by pressing the keypad zero key under certain conditions. (like with the shift key hald down, I think)

Actually there is one important danger key with OS X. I don't know why UI implementers insist on being able to do all sorts of file manipulation functions in contexts where you are supposed to be selecting or viewing a file (instead of, you know, switching to the file manager program), but they do. Windows goes out of its way to support moving and deleting files when you need to select a file, and various OS X programs insist on deleting a file whenever you hit command-delete (aka command-backspace).

The problem is that command-plus and command-minus are used for zoom in and out. (Very useful in the Preview.app image viewer.) Be off by one key when zooming in, and your file is suddenly moved to the trash, and its window (if it has one) closes. In a file viewer program. WITH NO UNDO AVAILABLE. WTF. Now you get to fish it out and put it back where it belongs. At least it also insists on playing a (non-configurable!) sound when it does that, so you can have some idea that something has happened.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Barefoot Monkey]

Pressing the Windows logo key is equivalent to Ctrl+Esc - it opens the "start" menu on Windows 95 and later operating systems. It also functions as a modifier key which is all-but-guaranteed not to have a meaning imposed by specific applications (unlike Ctrl and Alt, which apps all use for internal shortcuts) so you can safely use it for global hotkeys. Windows has several of these built-in - for example, you can press Win+E to launch Explorer, or Win+R to open the Run dialog, Win+D to hide all windows to expose the desktop, Win+T to give keyboard focus to the taskbar (this is extremely useful, but not widely-known) or Win+L to lock your computer.

It's a handy key, but is horribly-positioned on the keyboard - especially the one on the left, and especially when playing games.

0.01% of purposeful keypresses

[Art3x]

I don't always use the Caps Lock key, but when I do, it's usually on accident.

On my computer at work, I got so fed up that I pried off the Caps Lock key. I also pried off the Insert key, a key I never press on purpose. I was much happier.

Popularity vs usefulness

[Dcnjoe60]

Of course, checking how often Mac users use the right mouse button would really skew things, would it not? Besides, popularity and usefulness are not the same thing. If a two men were standing on a street corner handing out money and one was handing out free $20s while the other was handing out free $10s, which would be more popular? Probably the one giving out $20s. Does that mean the $10 bill isn't useful?

The reality is that there are some very good use cases for the caps-lock (as others have pointed out). If it isn't hurting anything where it is, then why move it? What other key would you put there that you would want to hit with your pinky to do something else, that most people would find as a useful improvement? Right now if I accidentally hit the caps lock, I get capital letters -- a nuisance but not terrible. What if you replace it with the ctrl or alt key as some have suggested? There could be far worse ramifications.

Regardless, popularity does not dictate usefulness. Chances are, you will never have to use the flotation device on an airplane or the oxygen max. Based on frequency of use, they must not be very popular. However, for the right user case, they are very useful.

Scroll Lock/FreeBSD and Sun Keyboards

[PincushionMan]

I do! The FreeBSD terminal uses a Scroll Lock tap to freeze the screen so that you can go back and read those make or gcc messages or warnings you just missed with the arrow keys. Another press of Scroll Lock returns you back to your prompt (or output, if you are still processing). LED is also usful to tell you what status you are in. Works great ...

Until you put your server on a KVM that uses Scroll Lock to select the current server or skip to the next server. So, do those Mac keyboards not have Scroll Lock, Break, and Print Screen? Other than those users using Greenshot or Gadwin ScreenPrint, how could they be using those keys...

Ah, I remember now - those are F13, F14, and F15. Except that the F-keys are hidden under other items like brightness up/down, volume up/down, screen mirror/extend and so on. So, why didn't researcher note those?

As for SUN keyboard layouts (USB variant plugged into Windows 7) - I like the Control Key placement(where caps lock is now). Escape is acceptable (replaces tilde & grace accent key). But that Backspace key! What were they smoking!
Sun Hardware Designer 1: "Most of Sun terminal app users use Ctrl-H and DEL anyway, so lets make the Backspace key the size of every other key, and put it UNDER the BackSlash key. So when a Windows user users our keyboard, every time he goes for BackSlash, he'll hit Backspace instead!"
Sun Hardware Designer 2: "That's great boss, my idea is to switch the position of the Super and Alt keys. Lets also shrink that BackSlash down and put a tilde/grave key there, too!"
Sun Hardware Designer 1: "Splendid, we'll keep people locked into using our servers forever because our design is so superior!"

Tongue firmly in cheek there, for those not getting it. I do like Caps Lock swtiched with Ctrl, though. That's very nice, and really is superior. I just wish those other keys weren't moved about. For those wondering what generation, there's a tiny Sun Sparc 4m that this is supposed to go with. The USB mouse doesn't work with Windows - maybe it needs a reflective pad?, but the keyboard works great.

:/ mah key mang

[bobmajdakjr]

I depend on the caps lock key - and not just for being cool. I tap the shit out of that key while coding anything like constants that need 3+ big letters in a row. Ain't nobody got time for Shift Dancing long consts.

Happy Hacking Keyboards Again

[TechyImmigrant]

My Happy Hacking Professional 2 keyboard has a control key in the place where a caps lock key usually goes.

/. Lameness filter

[AnalogDiehard]

The CAPS LOCK key is there because some posters need to be reminded to TURN IT OFF so they can get past the /. lameness filter.

Re:yes please:

[Ashtead]

I use the keypad while paying bills. There are account numbers, the amounts themselves, then these other long identifier strings of numbers that makes it certain that the mony ends up where it is supposed to go. Much easier than using the top row.

As for caps lock -- since I use vi a lot, the accidental turning on of this makes a lot of confusion since the various letter commands are different between upper and lower case: j moves down, J joins the line and the following then u is undo but U is undo to original text of the line. Then :e! starts over for another try...

Changing it to ctrl isn't great either, I'd type away at some website like this, then hit ^A and a couple letters later it is all: Where TF is all my text gone! Damn...

Thus, most of the keyboards here have the key removed so as to avoid the above kinds of hassles.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Isca]

It's still the fastest way in Windows 7, 8 & 10 + all of the server versions.

So it can be remapped at CTRL

[gvanbelle]

Just like God intended.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Travis Mansbridge]

It's called "command" and the key predates both OS X and even the Windows key.

Tiny, tiny hands.

[Etherwalk]

It's convenient. You might be typing with one hand, for example. Please don't take the caps lock away from me because you want everything to be popular.

There are two shift keys. Unless you have tiny, tiny hands, you can reach one of them with one hand that also reaches the key you want to shift. It's not even terrible hard--much easier, for example, than a one-octave split on a piano.

Only for developers: replace numbers with symbols

[gnu-sucks]

Try this one out: remap the upper numeric keys from numbers to the symbols they have above the numbers. When you need a number, hit shift to get the numbers or use the numeric keypad.

I find it very annoying to hold down shift so often while coding. I almost never use the upper-row numbers as numbers, but I hit a lot of symbols coding in C and C++. I definitely use the symbols more, why do I have to hit shift to get to them?

Just look at a hunk of your favorite OSS project's code. Are there more numbers or symbols?

Granted, any facebook/gmail computer user wouldn't get this at all...

Microsoft Key - Useful

[IcyWolfy]

The Windows key is pretty damned useful in day-to-day activities: (Not sure which are Windows 8 or newer, but many were in 7 as well )
I for one make use of:

Windows - LEFT, Windows - RIGHT : Snap half-screen left / Move to next Monitor;
Windows - UP, Windows DOWN : Maximize, Minimize
Windows SHIFT UP, Win-Shift-Down : Maximize/Restore Vertical only. (Width stays the same, only window height maximizes/restores)
Windows - Print Screen: Screenshot and save to file
Windows - X : Power Menu (Admin Command Promt, Control Panel, Shutdown/Hibernate/Sleep, etc)
Windows : Windows 8 Screen (Start typing to search for application to run)
Windows - L : Lock Screen (I use this at work, not at home)
Windows - P : Second Monitor Mode (Duplicate, Mirror, Laptop Only, Second Monitor Only)
Windows - D : Show Desktop (Minimize All) / If you don't need to open a new app, a second press will undo the minimize all
Windows - SPACE : Keyboard Language Selector (Probably not useful for americans); I use it for Intl Dvorak, US English, JP IME
    Windows - / : IME Recovert (Good for ZH, JP, KR)
Windows - E : New File Explorer Window
Windows - R : [ No longer useful - Open RUN box; Windows-SPACE has fully replaced this by allowing full text-search of all installed applications]
Windows - PAUSE : Bring up System Properties Screen (usually for debugging hardware issues, or seeing stats)
Windows - 1, 2, 3, 4 : (effectively click) Open/Switch to application pinned on task bar at position 1, 2, 3, 4...
Windows Shift - 1, 2, 3, 4: (effective shift-click) New instance of pinned task-bar application at specificed location
          [ These two I only use Windows 2, to open my IDE; pretty much everything else I just use Windows + (start typing app name) ]
Windows - Alt - Enter : Open Windows Media Center

Alt-Tab : Cycle through open windows
AltGr-Tab : Use keyboard to cycle through all windows in pop-up window; enter to actually switch. (Apparently, americans can use Ctrl-Alt-Tab for this)

  And there are many more Windows-Key shortcuts that I don't use; or probably don't even know about.

Re:Microsoft Key - Useful

[Barefoot Monkey]

I use most of those as well. I also assign various Win+Function keys to my media player's global hotkeys, and use AutoHotkey to make Win+Up/Down a bit more to my liking. Incidentally, here's the AutoHotkey script I developed, in case anyone finds it useful.

; Disable Win+F1 opening Windows help - have it mute the volume instead
#F1::Send {Volume_Mute}

; Win+F11/F12 control the system volume
#F11::Send {Volume_Down}
#F12::Send {Volume_Up}

; Win+Up toggles maximise instead of always maximising
#Up::
WinGetPos, width, height, , , A
if ( width < 0 and height < 0) {
        WinRestore, A
} else {
        WinMaximize, A
}
return

; Win+Down always minimises, instead of sometimes unmaximising
#Down::WinMinimize, A

Why is it still there?

[argStyopa]

BECAUSE SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED TO SHOUT, GODDAMNIT. /lolslashdot "Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING."

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[dpidcoe]

I've never really had that problem of hitting it on accident while gaming unless I was really frantic or horribly misaligned my fingers on the keys (at which point I'd be dead anyway so I never saw it as an issue). I had the opposite problem though once I got my G15. I'd use the switch on the keyboard to toggle it off, then forget to turn it on again and hit win+r-->type program name-->enter-->"wtf why is this random program on my desktop launching that's nowhere near what I typed???"

Most convenient key for semi-common actions

[IcyWolfy]

The Windows key is pretty damned useful in day-to-day activities: (Not sure which are Windows 8 or newer, but many were in 7 as well )
I for one make use of:

Windows - LEFT, Windows - RIGHT : Snap half-screen left / Move to next Monitor;
Windows - UP, Windows DOWN : Maximize, Minimize
Windows SHIFT UP, Win-Shift-Down : Maximize/Restore Vertical only. (Width stays the same, only window height maximizes/restores)
Windows - Print Screen: Screenshot and save to file
Windows - X : Power Menu (Admin Command Promt, Control Panel, Shutdown/Hibernate/Sleep, etc)
Windows : Windows 8 Screen (Start typing to search for application to run)
Windows - L : Lock Screen (I use this at work, not at home)
Windows - P : Second Monitor Mode (Duplicate, Mirror, Laptop Only, Second Monitor Only)
Windows - D : Show Desktop (Minimize All) / If you don't need to open a new app, a second press will undo the minimize all
Windows - SPACE : Keyboard Language Selector (Probably not useful for americans); I use it for Intl Dvorak, US English, JP IME
    Windows - / : IME Recovert (Good for ZH, JP, KR)
Windows - E : New File Explorer Window
Windows - R : [ No longer useful - Open RUN box; Windows-SPACE has fully replaced this by allowing full text-search of all installed applications]
Windows - PAUSE : Bring up System Properties Screen (usually for debugging hardware issues, or seeing stats)
Windows - 1, 2, 3, 4 : (effectively click) Open/Switch to application pinned on task bar at position 1, 2, 3, 4...
Windows Shift - 1, 2, 3, 4: (effective shift-click) New instance of pinned task-bar application at specificed location
          [ These two I only use Windows 2, to open my IDE; pretty much everything else I just use Windows + (start typing app name) ]
Windows - Alt - Enter : Open Windows Media Center

Alt-Tab : Cycle through open windows
AltGr-Tab : Use keyboard to cycle through all windows in pop-up window; enter to actually switch. (Apparently, americans can use Ctrl-Alt-Tab for this)

  And there are many more Windows-Key shortcuts that I don't use; or probably don't even know about.

Full list of short-cuts apparently at : http://windows.microsoft.com/e...

GRRR

[Ted Stoner]

HULK HATE CAPS LOCK. ALWAYS HITTING BY MISTAKE! Oh sorry. Hulk hates caps lock. Always hitting by mistake!

On one IBM laptop I was so exasperated by caps lock that I did a registry hack to effectively nullify the key.

I used to shake my head at some of the old IBM 3270 mainframe consoles that had a physical rocker switch to convert lower case displayed to upper case. As I recall though, if you were typing in case-sensitive stuff, it would display as upper case but actually the bytes entered would represent the lower case characters (unless you remembered to use shift of course).

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[tehlinux]

IMHO, it's the alt key.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[elistan]

Windows overloaded the alternate key for opening menus, which meant that it is no longer a convenient key if you need to enter non-ASCII characters (for example, a Euro symbol or a letter with an accent, which are both easy to enter on a Mac).

I don't know how it works on a Mac, but entering alternate characters is still easy with Windows, even 8.1. (I haven't tried it on 10.) Rather, I consider it pretty easy. :-) Just hold down the ALT key, type in the four-digit code for the character you want, then release the ALT key and your character will show up. A Euro sign is ALT+0128, for example. â. (That would show up as proper Euro, except this is slashdot. -roll eyes-) Doesn't matter if numlock is on or off, doesn't matter what you might be doing with a menu at the time.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Sowelu]

I've been using some random ergonomic keyboard (with Windows key included) for over a year without realizing that 1) it didn't have a context-menu key, and 2) that's where the 'fn' key lived, which apparently makes my f-keys do weird undesirable things. So...I guess my curiosity towards "what happens if I try to put the menu key into my workflow" will have to wait for a different keyboard.

Re:People with disabilities

[IcyWolfy]

Then there are all the keyboard layouts where
CAPS != SHIFT.
Giving 4 states
NONE (lowercase)
SHIFT (alternate characters, lowercase)
CAPS (uppercase)
CAPS SHIFT (alternate characters, uppercase)

See Czech, and Swiss German for two common examples.
in Czech:
shift-ú = /
CAPS, ú = Ú
CAPS, Shift-ú = /
á í é
SHIFT: 8 9 0
CAPS: Á Í É
CAPS SHIFT: 8 9 0

Re:It's IBM's fault. Everyone copied the PC.

[jfengel]

My Osborne 1 split the capslock key into two regular-sized keys, one for CTRL and the other for capslock. That worked well. (And I really miss Wordstar. Amazing what they could cram into 64k. They had to play silly games, loading and unloading parts of the software from the floppy disk, a really primitive kind of virtual memory.)

Caps Lock is required

[IcyWolfy]

Several Keyboard layouts have 4 shift states. CAPS !== SHIFT.
See Czech and Swiss German for common examples.

the upper row of CZ are letters.
SHIFT gets you 123457890
CAPS: gets uppercased letters
CAPS-Shift: numbers again

Swiss:
Shift ü = è
CAPS ON: Shift Ü = È

If you get rid of the caps lock, you'll have to introduce a common dual-state key for the dozens of languges that require it.

Re:yes please:

[IcyWolfy]

Swss German
Czech.

the upper row of CZ are letters.
SHIFT gets you 123457890
CAPS: gets uppercased letters
CAPS-Shift: numbers again

Swiss:
Shift ü = è
CAPS ON: Shift Ü = È

Re:Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 2 - No Caps Lock

[IcyWolfy]

How would that work in the Swiss (German), or Czech markets?
As Shift and Caps are different states.
Shift-ü = è
CAPS; shift-Ü = È
would that mean, to type Èt, one would have to do [shift, shift, shift-ü, shift, shift], t ?
And for that matter, a Ü would be what [shift, shift, ü, shift shift]
I hope they didn't do that home/end thing in the European markets.

Too many shortcuts

[sjbe]

The Windows key is pretty damned useful in day-to-day activities:
I for one make use of:

That's quite a long list and I have NO interest in memorizing all that. If it works for you that's great but personally I detest arbitrary keyboard shortcuts. I use a handful that are common but to me its a sign of a poorly designed system. If the interface is so clumsy you need to memorize a page long list of shortcuts then I'll just use something else. It's a big part of why I detest both vi and emacs.

(For the record I also hate tiny icons you have to mouse over to figure out their function)

Re:Too many shortcuts

[Wycliffe]

That's quite a long list and I have NO interest in memorizing all that.

Shortcut keys are for power users and aren't really meant to be memorized directly. I prefer nice menus but I tend to go look up the shortcut keys or try to create a macro when I notice that I keep doing the same thing over and over again. If you want to know how useful shortcut keys can be, try playing StarCraft 1 with someone who uses shortcut keys. They will beat you every time if you're just using the mouse.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[fisted]

let the user map it themself

The horror. Letting the user decide what to do with the typically three extra keys? Can't have that.

Capital Umlauts -- Or, Don't F with the Swiss

[IcyWolfy]

THIS.
Shift + Letter yields --- DIFFERENT Lowercased Letters!
Shift ä = à
Shift ö = é
Shift ü = è

To get uppercased version of any of those letters, you have to turn Caps Lock on.
With CAPS ON:
Shift Ä = À
Shift Ö = É
Shift Ü = È

Re:Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 2 - No Caps Lock

[IcyWolfy]

And apparently, that's what they went with
http://forum.projektneptun.ch/...

super key

[Xicor]

because it makes a great super key.

Re:It's IBM's fault. Everyone copied the PC.

[tap]

That's just not true!

The IBM PC-AT keyboard, circa 1984, has control as a large key above shift and to the left of the 'A' key, in its proper place. Alt is below shift. There are no right-hand alt or control keys and caps-lock is off on the right side below shift where the right control key is now. There was a large gap between the spaceback and caps-lock, since there was no right alt or windows key.

The PC-XT keyboard, circa 1981, had the same layout of control-shift-alt in the proper order on the left. The caps-lock key was on the far upper-right corner, above the numeric keypad.

It wasn't until the 101 key model M that IBM messed up and placed the caps lock key in the incorrect location above shift and next to 'A'.

Is there really no one else here who remebers typing away on the original PC keyboard, with the control key in the proper location, the giant plus key, break on the scroll lock key and printscreen on the dedicated '*' key?

Re: The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...eve

[LocalH]

You don't need the R part of that anymore. Tap Windows, then start typing. This has been the case since 7 for sure, and probably Vista too (although I never really used Vista on my own machines).

"PC" keyboards are just wrong

[NorthWay]

Why can't you get a properly mapped keyboard nowadays? Doing some funny remap of cap-lock is not the same as having the CTRL key in the right place and the lock key between it and "A".

Old computers did it right (Unixen, Amiga, probably more). This really irks me.

OTOH, how often are you shouting at people behind your keyboard? Even then you only need to press it once, so it is working like intended I'd say Oh wait, I'm talking with people on the internet, the lock key gets used a bit I guess...

Don't CHANGE anything. Remove CAPSLOCK cap.

[TheRealHocusLocus]

All of my keyboards have CAPSLOCK key cap popped off and taped to the side, in case I ever want to put it on again. Then a piece of electrical tape over the center post to keep crumbs out and done. Now when I go for 'A' I get just A every time. If I want CAPSLOCK I can press down directly on the post. It has reduced CAPSLOCK errors by 101%.

People not using Very Useful right mouse button... I'm mystified. Maybe they're just stupid.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[0xdeaddead]

absolutely, I can hit control+esc on my own, thank you very much.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[spitzak]

I think you will find a lot of Linux desktops have copied the actions from Windows for the Windows key (Linux calls it the Super key). Super-R for a run box, for instance.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[spitzak]

Actually the key at that position was often called "Meta". This was true on early Linux X11 as well. For some reason it was changed to "Super" around 2000, thus breaking a lot of software that assumed it was Meta.

"...Um, International standards"

[saccade.com]

I once (many years ago) found myself in the same room with the manager responsible for Apple's peripherals, including keyboards. I asked (actually, begged) him to get rid of the stupid Caps Lock key. All he did was mumble something about "international standards" required for big corporate/government sales. So maybe the solution is to get corporations & governments to change their keyboard requirements. (Yeah, good luck with that...). In the mean time, every major OS has a tool or setting to make Caps lock control. Once you set that up, you don't even notice it any more.

caps lock should be on the function row

[ILongForDarkness]

right next to the calculator button. The 1 time a year you wish you had it you can hunt for it and push it. Maybe instead it could be a page down and with shift a page up button Rather than when navigating having to go way the hell off the home row to hit the tiny buttons.

Re:It's IBM's fault. Everyone copied the PC.

[baegucb]

Someone who knows what carriage return means :)
Actually back in the 70s is when IBM did this iirc. But I get old, and yes, I used the original IBM PC.

A very informative comment :)

And vi rules! lol

Re:It's IBM's fault. Everyone copied the PC.

[Darinbob]

I still remap it to control. It's the only proper use of that key. If you have tools that use control key, it's extremely inconvenient to use the "standard" control key position, it just doesn't work for touch typists.

The capslock functionality itself is mostly useless too. You'd only really need it if you were using some language that only used upper case keywords, but even then it's cumbersome to keep turning it on and off.

Touch typists

[FrozenGeek]

I'm a (very poor) touch typist. If you start radically altering the keyboard, you will seriously P.O. every touch typist out there because our muscle memory won't work with your keyboard. That means that they will be much less likely to buy your keyboard. By extension, if your keyboard happens to be attached to a laptop, they will be much less likely to buy your laptop. Maybe non-touch typists will be more likely to buy your wares and offset the loss of the touch typists. But maybe not - what if they dislike your changes? Bottom line: there's probably no great business advantage to changing the keyboard but there is a significant business risk, so ain't gonna happen.
If you have a good idea for a better keyboard, start a kickstarter campaign and build/market it yourself. You'll make a huge pile of money. Or not.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Darinbob]

I rarely use it on Windows 8. It's a stupid key. I don't use the feature to find program by name, it's too weird for me. If a program isn't pinned or on an icon, it's just not going to have a name I know by heart (ie, I'd probably type Word instead of Microsoft Word). For explorer it's pinned there and easy to use (and right click to get recent entries is more convenient than just getting explorer).

When I do use the windows key, it's to pop up (ugh) metro then click "all programs" to get a bizarrely organized start menu where I can browse for stuff I don't know the name of or to see what's there (things install with readme files or extra utilities that you'd never see if you didn't have a start menu or some other way to browse through it all).

Windows 10 now has a real start menu again, so even they recognize the folly of removing it even if their fanboys won't.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Darinbob]

Alt key is same as meta most of the time. For alternate characters you use AltGr, even though it's not on US keyboards.

Re: My Pet Peeves (recent Windows laptop keyboards

[Darinbob]

I have a macbook pro, but never open it. It's not a laptop for me, but a very thin desktop. So I use the mouse and keyboard, much more sensible (after you swap off Apple's idiotic idea of reversing the scroll direction to match phones).

Acronyms

[blue trane]

It's easier to type acronyms, and case-sensitive passwords that are generated for you and you need to type once before changing, with a caps lock key.

I can't believe I even need to point this out

[Gumbercules!!]

Because not everyone is a developer?

Accounts payable / data entry people most definitely use it. However, logically, of course the amount of times they press it is small - it *should* be small numbers of times they press it. That's the whole point of the capslock - you only need to press it occasionally to change your case.

So a data entry person may push it once - enter 2000 characters into a system that all need to be in upper case (and this is ludicrously common in various ERP or accounting systems), then push it again. For that person, capslock was invaluable - but for some half thought out metrics gathering muppets, they see capslock as hardly being used. I can't believe someone even needs to point this out...

Re:It's IBM's fault. Everyone copied the PC.

[bws111]

You're both right in a way. The 3278s did have a cap lock next to the A key. That was because the 3278s replaced typewriters in the corporate environment. The original PC/XT/AT systems were not targeted at the corporate environment, they were targeted at the SOHO market. Those keyboards did not have the caps lock next to the A key. The 3270PC was used as a replacement for 3278, and it had the caps lock next to the A. This was the first IBM PC targeted for corporate. After that most of their PCS were corporate use, and they retained that layout.

My Apple mouse doesn't even HAVE a right button...

[weav]

... you insensitive clod! I have to press the CTRL key when I click, to get a menu!

Can't say I use caps lock for anything but fouling up passwords, though.

Re:It's IBM's fault. Everyone copied the PC.

[DocHoncho]

You can still buy keyboards with a DIP switch to swap the CTRL and Caps Lock keys.

That sounds expensive and unnecessary. It's pretty simple to remap (or swap) the keys with software, even Windows will let you do it, albeit with a registry change. I typically just remap caps to control. Can't say that I've missed caps lock, it isn't that hard to hold down shift and type. The only problem is being used to having a control key instead of caps is using computers where it isn't remapped. I'm forever turning on caps lock when I have to use other peoples computers. Grrr

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[I4ko]

I would say F6, F9, F11, Pause, SysRq, PrintScrn, are more useless than caps lock

Re:It's IBM's fault. Everyone copied the PC.

[Marginal Coward]

IMHO, the IBM PC-AT keyboard was the best there ever was on a PC (or compatible.) It took me quite a long time to retrain myself when they moved that beautiful from that single large Ctrl key in the right place to two small keys in the wrong place. Worse, they put the Caps Lock in that prominent spot, leading to it getting hit a lot by accident - which I still do to this day: I think I hit it more often by accident than I do on purpose!

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[mvdw]

...Or even Ctrl-Alt-Del and Enter (chooses the first item, which is lock screen, at least on Win Xp Pro and 7 Enterprise, the only ones I have experience with).

Some users can't send mail without it...

[cstacy]

AOL still in business

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[SuricouRaven]

Even worse were the keyboards that appeared for a brief time with 'sleep' and 'power off' keys.

nigerian conspiracy

[jjohn_h]

http://linuxgazette.net/186/an...

Yes, there must be a Nigerian conspiracy to keep CapsLock.

Obligatory bash.org?

[DustPuppySnr]

http://bash.org/?835030

Re:It's IBM's fault. Everyone copied the PC.

[xenobyte]

I still remap it to control. It's the only proper use of that key. ...

I tend to hit it when I go for the A-key so I've always simply remapped it to also be an A-key, or if I tend to hit both keys (depends on the keyboard) map it to do absolutely nothing.

keyboard.io

[Laz10]

I preordered one from this kickstarter: http://shop.keyboard.io/

I have been a ergo keyboard nerd for years - looking for the next rethink.
Of course it has no caps lock. But you could get once, if you really really want to.

http://shop.keyboard.io/

Testing developers. Developers. Sheesh!

[Xtifr]

This was a study of developers. Developers are not exactly typical users. Developers like things like vi and EMACS. And, in fact, developers can already buy keyboards with (for example) caps lock switched with control. (If they care, and are too lazy to remap their own keys.)

Do a broader study of general computer users, and then maybe we'll talk. (No real skin off my nose anyway, since if you design a keyboard layout Idon't like, I'll just remap it to be the way I do like. 'Cause I'm a developer.)

Nobody is using right mouse button?

[Kartu]

Then something is wrong with me, I guess.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[mwvdlee]

I've had one where the sleep button was directly below the delete key. That keyboard lasted for about 3 days.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[dargaud]

It's possible to remap the menu key to a different hardware key (such as Ins, Pause, or even the weird 'Calc' key I have on my Dell 17"), but it's harder to remap than most other keys, which you can do easily in Linux (In KDE it's in the advanced options in the keyboard settings).

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[TheRaven64]

Rather, I consider it pretty easy. :-) Just hold down the ALT key, type in the four-digit code for the character you want, then release the ALT key and your character will show up

Is this really what Windows users consider easy? On a Mac, it depends on the keyboard layout, but for me it's alt-2. A cent symbol is alt-4 (dollar is shift-4). Entering a character with an accent is alt-something for the accent and then the letter that it goes on top of. For example, i-umlaut is option-u then i.

If memorising unicode character numbers is your idea of good HCI, then I really hope I never use a program that you've designed.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Tomahawk]

Windows-D show the desktop
Windows-M minimise all windows
Windows-E Explorer
Windows-R Run
Windows on it's own Start Menu/Screen (CTRL-ESC does the same)

(and there are plethora more that I don't use - Google knows them)

So, yeah, when you have to run Windows, it's useful to know the Windows Key shortcuts. Cuts down on having to use the mouse. Lots of old Windows keyboard shortcuts still work too, and have done since at least Windows 3:

Alt-F4 close the currently running program
Alt-Space bring up the window menu. (a useful shortcut for a window that opened off-screen is Alt-Space M Left-arrow, then hold down the left mouse button and drag the window back onto the screen - Alt-Space brings up the menu, M for Move, and the left-arrow (or any arrow key) is important to do the initial move of the window before you can drag it with the mouse)
CTRL-SHIFT-ESC (since Windows 95) bring up the Task manager

Again, there are a plethora more that Google knows about, but these are the ones that I still use.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Tomahawk]

On a European keyboard, AltGr is used as a modifier. Using that, I can get (on my Irish layout) áéíóú and € easily - I don't need to remember any non-intuitive codes that I wouldn't be able to teach my mother...

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Tomahawk]

I had a laptop once that didn't have a context menu key and I hated it. I had another that had the context menu key on the top row, and I hated it too.

Today, I rarely use the context menu key (certainly not consciously). I had to think for a few seconds to which key you were referring...

It amazing how usage patterns change over time without you actually noticing... hmmm....

Caps lock is in use

[olterman]

Caps Lock is for the cases where you have to type more uppercase letters while still being able to type lower case letters: having caps lock reduces the amount of typing in this case. Shift is for the cases where you have to type more lowercase letters while still being able to type upper case letters: having shift reduces the amount of typing in this case.

So the question about "do we need caps lock at all?" requires that we have to think how common are those use cases where caps lock is beneficial. Some people use it for headlines when no other effects are possible. I've seen caps used in SQL commands and some companies even have "coding standard" to make the caps mandatory.

ErgoDox might be the future

[ecloud]

I have ordered a couple variants of these; haven't received either of them yet. But it sounds good in theory. And there are no IP issues: it's an open-source design, with open-source firmware, completely programmable so that each user can customize his own layout. (For the first time I'll have a keyboard I really "own".) The keyboard can still be made flat (although usually the two halves are positioned independently), so any laptop manufacturer could even start shipping with this kind of layout. I hope that will happen at some point.

The main points are that the two halves are rotated to a better angle to reduce strain, and also that the thumbs are able to operate several keys each, not just the spacebar.

What to do with capslock is such a minor issue compared to everything else that's wrong with QWERTY. This is why, despite being quite a fast typist, and not suffering particularly much wrist pain, I nevertheless feel that it's time to try something more efficient. I do have some shoulder pain sometimes, so figured maybe that's from having to hold my hands too close together in front of me. It's worse when I use a laptop too much, whereas at work I've been using an old Microsoft 4000 ergo keyboard for years.

Now if they would just ship... ;-)

An similar alternative is keyboard.io. From one side, I wish I'd waited for their crowdfunding campaign to get started, because it's gorgeous, and I love the wooden-case idea. From another side, I think theirs is going to be less customizable: every key has a different shape, so you can't have printed rearrangeable keycaps, e.g. if you want to try colemak you have to ignore the legends on the keys, or get keys without legends. And they are definitely not going to ship until the middle of next year, either.

cross-platform remapping

[ecloud]

I actually use Linux, OS X and occasionally Windows at work. (I work on Qt, so I need to be able to test bugs and features on every supported platform.) I use the same keyboard for all of them, on a KVM. It's not so hard to get capslock to be the control key on all of them. (On Linux though, that means remapping it on both the console and in X11 and Wayland globally, not just in some desktop environment's control panel.) But then after using OS X I have grown to like the idea of keeping control (as used on the terminal) separate from command (as used to copy and paste text and other such things, even in the terminal window). I'd like to find a way to make that consistent everywhere. I think I will find a way on Linux. But first I want to have an ergo keyboard with a real command key. (Thus the ergodox, with its customizable firmware.)

For now though, on a regular ergo keyboard, capslock is control, and control is also control on Linux and Windows, whereas on OS X I map capslock to control and control to command and the windows key to command, so that I can develop portable muscle-memory: I use the same key for control-C or command-C regardless of OS when I want to copy text, and the same capslock key for control-C to stop a running program, for example. And the windows key is closer to where the command key is on a MacBook Pro, so if I hit that one by accident it still works, whereas the windows key has no other use on OS X.

It IMO doesn't make as much sense to remap the windows key, because it has its own uses in various Linux desktops and window managers now. So, the more bucky keys, the better; it seems I actually use 5 of them now: control, command, alt, window and compose. Oh, and shift, of course. The window key is still the least useful though. Can't decide whether I prefer using window-mouse-drag or alt-mouse-drag for moving windows around. There is some inconsistency about that between openbox, awesome and weston.

I was using a model-M at home, with no Windows key, but my wife complained that she couldn't sleep, so that's the trouble with that. But then I had to try to use the two alt keys more effectively. The right one has to be compose if you need compose, whereas if you also have a menu key, you could use that for compose. I live in Norway now, and don't want to get used to Norwegian keyboards because they are too different (lots of odd and unnecessary changes), because I don't actually write much in the Norwegian language, and because I will never be able to switch completely due to having lots of old hardware. So I use compose for writing the 3 extra characters ø å and æ. I think it's an intuitive and extensible way to handle all the accented characters, and everyone should have a convenient way of typing them, even if they are only needed in rare cases.

After I switch to ergodox, I wonder if it's going to get really hard to use other keyboards though.

Shortcuts are a signal of bad design

[sjbe]

Shortcut keys are for power users and aren't really meant to be memorized directly.

The term "power user" is fairly meaningless. It typically references someone who knows all sorts of arcane stuff about an application or system. But it reinforces my point. If they need to know all this arcane stuff and the system is so clumsy they need shortcuts then the system needs to be designed better. I could be considered a power user of quite a number of applications but I still think shortcut keys are usually a clumsy workaround in most cases. There are exceptions but they are exceptions that prove the rule. I think keyboard shortcuts are a perfect example of the "if the only tool you have is a hammer everything is a nail" principle.

I prefer nice menus but I tend to go look up the shortcut keys or try to create a macro when I notice that I keep doing the same thing over and over again.

Exactly my point. I do the same thing (when possible) but I maintain that generally if I need to do that it very often means the interface needs some rework.

If you want to know how useful shortcut keys can be, try playing StarCraft 1 with someone who uses shortcut keys. They will beat you every time if you're just using the mouse.

It's not that they aren't useful or that they don't work. The problem I have with them is more of a design principle than a specific complaint. For example I happen to know that the shortcut to display the History in my browser is Ctrl+Shift+H. In my opinion if I'm using that so much that it needs a shortcut then it should be a more prominent part of the interface. As a general rule I think keyboard shortcuts should not be application specific any more than absolutely necessary. Cut/Copy/Paste are fine. Ctrl+Shift+A to open the Add-Ons in Firefox should either be user defined or simply not be given a shortcut or be made more prominent in the GUI.

Laptop, you insensitive clod

[tepples]

I've long wanted a game where you are a wizard, and thieves steal your scrolls, unless you Scroll Lock.

That's fine until you get players using laptops. Imagine the following question in your game's support ticket system or in Arqade:

How do I lock my scrolls?

How do I keep thieves from stealing my scrolls? The game's manual says push the Scroll Lock key on the keyboard. But I'm playing on a Dell [model redacted] laptop whose keyboard doesn't have a Scroll Lock key.

[sparlock] [pc]

Sleep key on a laptop

[tepples]

To be fair though, putting power and sleep buttons on the keyboard was a monumentally stupid idea. It's far too easy to accidentally hit them.

If they're placed in proper positions on a keyboard, how are they any easier to hit than the corresponding keys on a laptop? In any case, I have my keyboard's sleep key bound to "Ask what to do" (shutdown, restart, log out, or lock and suspend).

Say it nicely

[tepples]

you can't tell your BiL he's an idiot.

Most insults can be reworded to be both more polite and more precise: "BiL could use some training in email best practices."

Whining like a TV?

[tepples]

It could be magnetostriction along the power path between the wall and your SSD. It's the same source as the 60 Hz hum in a lot of non-motorized devices or the 15.7 kHz whine in a CRT SDTV.

FINANCIAL NEEDS ALL CAPS IN SOME FORMS

[eionmac]

As I do banking and credit payments (letter of credit) between countries, a long time ago the banking indiustry standarised on CAPITALS to avoid problems, and enable secure teletext tranactions. These same conventions apply today. Without a caps lock, I could be unproductive for long periods and I would not estimate the finacial problems for my customers or their suppliers or payroll payments of a mistype.

Needed

[cwsumner]

Many people, who type professionally, find it less tiring to hit the capslock key and then type a letter, rather than having to hold down the shift key while typing a letter at the same time. Of course, it might depend on keyboard layout.

However, it is very bad to assume a small statistical usage means something is not needed. Like a seat belt, it might not be used very often, but if you need it and don't have it you could be in big trouble.

It is likely that no one, with any brains, would buy a keyboard with no capslock! 8-)

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Darinbob]

Hmm, never need Windows-D, the desktop is the only thing that ever shows. Minimize all windows is never needed (but sadly happens without my asking if my mouse drifts over to the hot corner). Explorer is less useful than right clicking on the pinned Explorer icon on the task bar and choosing the recently used location. Windows-R I have used a few times, but I often just create my own shortcut for the 3 things I have ever used that for (cmd, calc, and regedit).

So I could pry off that Windows key and never miss it, it can even fit into the same coffin as that pointless menu key.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[dacaldar]

By "context menu key", do you mean right-click? I'm assuming the mention of Right-click is either a mistake, or skewed by an inordinate amount of Mac users with their single button philosophy. I don't see how you are doing anything productively (with a mouse) if you aren't using right-click. If you aren't using a mouse at all, like for command line work or vi/vim, that's fine.

Use Colemak.

[Sabre Runner]

I switched to Colemak about a year ago. It's much better than QWERTY. And in the standard Colemak setup, Caps Lock is replaced with another Backspace key. That's useful.

apples and oranges

[gzuckier]

yeah i guess the right mouse key wouldn't be popular with mac users but might be different among ibmers.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[gzuckier]

Just curious, what OS are you using? On both Windows and Linux, it's a pretty handy key.

when you're in a case-sensitive OS, it's a help alright.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[gzuckier]

Just curious, what OS are you using? On both Windows and Linux, it's a pretty handy key.

when you're in a case-sensitive OS, it's a help alright.

that was supposed to be the capslock, not the microsoft key. the microsoft key does things in linux??

you might, actually

[Chirs]

Consider the following cases:
1) You want to hot-swap your keyboards and have the adjustment carry over between keyboards.
2) You want to switching between host terminals and virtual machines and have the adjustment carry over into the various VMs.
3) You want the adjustment to affect the BIOS as well.
4) Your keyboard is on a KVM switch and you want the change to affect multiple computers that may be running different OS's.

In the above cases, it would be handy to have a physical "bump in the cable" adapter.

Re:It's IBM's fault. Everyone copied the PC.

[gzuckier]

That's just not true! The IBM PC-AT keyboard, circa 1984, has control as a large key above shift and to the left of the 'A' key, in its proper place. Alt is below shift. There are no right-hand alt or control keys and caps-lock is off on the right side below shift where the right control key is now. There was a large gap between the spaceback and caps-lock, since there was no right alt or windows key. The PC-XT keyboard, circa 1981, had the same layout of control-shift-alt in the proper order on the left. The caps-lock key was on the far upper-right corner, above the numeric keypad. It wasn't until the 101 key model M that IBM messed up and placed the caps lock key in the incorrect location above shift and next to 'A'. Is there really no one else here who remebers typing away on the original PC keyboard, with the control key in the proper location, the giant plus key, break on the scroll lock key and printscreen on the dedicated '*' key?

And the freeware you would install to swap the AT keys back to where they had been.

Why?

[the_almighty_gooby]

SO THAT I CAN DO THIS!

Re:It's IBM's fault. Everyone copied the PC.

[mcswell]

"control as a large key above shift and to the left of the 'A' key, in its proper place" Amen, preach it, brother! That's where God intended it to be.

And on computers where I have permissions to do so, the CapsLock key acts like a Ctrl key. It's a RegEdit hack in Windows; I think there's a similar way to do it in Linux. On most computers the CapsLock LED "knows" I've made the change, but on some keyboards the LED seems to still think that key is CapsLock.

I put the Ctrl keys to use by remapping most of them to be cursor movement keys, so I don't have to take my fingers off the alphabetic part of the keyboard to move the cursor.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[mcswell]

Ctrl-Esc doesn't work? I use that to get to the Start Menu in Win7, I would have assumed Ctrl-Esc would have a similar function in Win8 (which I have avoided ever using).

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[mcswell]

Meta-Hyper-Nonsense

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Kiaser Zohsay]

http://i.stack.imgur.com/sgzBP...

On a keyboard that follows the Windows 104 key layout, it is the key that activates the same menu that is activated by a right-click of the mouse. One of the ancestor posts mentioned the Apple key and OSX that corresponds to the Windows logo key, but I'm not familiar enough with Apple keyboards to comment on them.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[PhloppyPhallus]

It does! I have an IBM Model M attached to my Windows 8 PC, which gave me a brief bit of trouble until I learned that I could use Ctrl-Esc instead.

It's not the most ergonomic key chord, but as an Emacs user, I don't care about that anyway!

Windows key

[MoarSauce123]

Before killing Caps Lock remove that ridiculous Windows key that constantly gets in the way!

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[TheRaven64]

Nobody really needs to enter control characters anymore

Except those of us who use a terminal, who find control-C and control-Z (and, on FreeBSD, control-T) indispensable.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[I confirm I'm not a]

It does, in Gnome at least (not used KDE in donkey's years, other environments YMMV). https://wiki.gnome.org/Gnome3C... This obviously assumes you use a bog-standard keyboard, but you need to make a real effort these days to get one without a Windows key.

Re:The Microsoft key!!!! I've never used it...ever

[Yaztromo]

I don't know how it works on a Mac, but entering alternate characters is still easy with Windows, even 8.1. (I haven't tried it on 10.) Rather, I consider it pretty easy. :-) Just hold down the ALT key, type in the four-digit code for the character you want, then release the ALT key and your character will show up. A Euro sign is ALT+0128, for example.

On OS X, you hit Shift-Option-2. Option-3 gives a pound symbol, Option-4 cents.

You still have to get to know some of the shift-option combinations, but that's WAY easier than having to know all of the character codes for whatever you want to type. Less keystrokes too. Accented characters are somewhat easier, in that you can type the accent, and then the character you want to accent (so if you want a circumflex over a character you type Option-i, followed by the character to accent). Again, it's easier to remember one two-key stroke to get the accent you want, followed by typing the letter you need accented than remembering half a dozen four-digit numeric codes. OS X does this way better than Windows.

Yaz

Just an ordinary user who is a poor typist

[rssrss]

Yes. Caps Lock is useless to me. One of these days I will install a utility to disable it.

Other keys:

I use : about ten times for every ; I use. Why aren't they in the opposite order.

In the old typing days. the . and , keys were often doubled, i.e. shift . was . and shift , was , It was actually faster for me that way. I don't use < and > enough to have them on that part of the keyboard. Ironically, on /. you have to type four characters to make those things appear.

While we are moving > and < can we move [ and ] and { and }. I actually use ( and ). If they were down on the [ and ] keys, it would save me some effort. I know that some programers use { and } a lot, but ordinary users don't.

Also, even in this internet age, I use ? which is part of ordinary English grammar, a lot more than /. Why not put / with \ and send | to some place where kind folks can give it a nice home? Then double the ? like the . and the ,

I would also like to say that I like and appreciate my right mouse button. I know it is anathema on Macs, but Windows makes good use of it.