

Ditch Caps Lock on Your Mac - showngo
http://brooksreview.net/2010/12/caps-lock/

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xpaulbettsx
Switch Caps Lock and Ctrl - it'll drive you crazy for a week or two, then
you'll never go back; Caps Lock is far more ergonomically placed than Ctrl
considering how often you hit the latter vs. the former

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xpaulbettsx
Ah, forgot to mention - on Mac and Linux it's easy, on Windows there's
Ctrl2Cap from Sysinternals that'll make the Caps Lock also act as Ctrl

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StavrosK
How do you do it on Linux?

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bad_user
In Ubuntu (I think it works in Gnome in general):

System Menu -> Preferences -> Keyboard -> Layouts -> Options -> Ctrl Key
Position -> Make Caps Lock an additional Ctrl

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StavrosK
Ah, there's also a "swap ctrl and caps lock" option, thanks!

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dfox
For a long time I toyed with idea of repurposing old Apple Enhanced II
Keyboard that I got somewhere for free to use with my desktop, as it is quite
well built. And there was one giant problem with that: I use capslock as
another control key (almost everywhere, including Windows) and this is simply
impossible to do with that keyboard, because capslock latches mechanically...

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samatman
I switched CapsLock for delete, rather than control. It's an ergonomic
lifeline; I can draft as much as I want, without developing shooting pain from
the 'pinky shoot'.

Tip: disable CapsLock first, or there will be system lag when you use it as
the delete key. Also, consider temporarily disabling the hardware backspace
key until you learn to use the new one.

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StavrosK
Does it still exhibit that ridiculous "protection" where it requires you to
press it for half a second or so before it activates? It drives me mad, I have
to press it two or three times before I remember where I'm typing and hold it
down for the ages it requires.

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tzs
OS X has no such feature. Some particular keyboards have built-in protection
against accidental CAPS LOCK, though, so that may be what you are seeing.

If you are using an Apple keyboard and it has that behavior, check for a
firmware update. They issued an update a long time ago that turns off that
behavior on that key when it is being used for something other than CAPS LOCK.

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StavrosK
Yeah, I guess you're right, since I run Ubuntu and still can't turn the damn
thing off...

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mcaruso
I used mine as an extra control for awhile. Currently I use it to switch to
Japanese input mode.

It's unfortunate that you can't set it to Escape (without some dodgy hack at
least), would be great for vim.

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dfox
XKB keyboard maps recently got option to swap esc and capslock, but for long
time that required dodgy hacks with xmodmap or writing your own keymap. On the
other hand swaping capslock and esc (or for that matter any other keys) is
trivial in windows (althought it requires writing obscure binary blocks into
keyboard driver's configuration).

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akamaka
I love changing caps lock to ctrl, because it's just like the old Sun
Microsystems keyboards I used to use in my university computer lab.

Does anyone know if the Sun keyboard introduced this layout, or if it dates
back even further?

Edit: While I was looking for info on the Sun keyboards, I came across this
article, about why it's a bad idea to switch caps lock and ctrl. I don't
agree, but it's interesting: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1996002>

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bad_user
That link doesn't work btw. Also, I recommend ditching Caps Lock altogether,
not just switching.

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teilo
Whenever I have activated it, it has always been by accident. I have been in
the habit, for a long time, of holding the shift key with my left pinky
whenever I need all caps. I can still type an A with my ring finger, and it
feels completely natural to do so.

Despite this, it never once occurred to me to turn the blasted thing off. I
just mapped it as a Ctrl key. I feel so old school. I may even learn Emacs
now.

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_delirium
I use caps lock while programming quite a bit for some reason, mainly in C. It
might just be habit, but when I want to type something like CONSTANT or MACRO,
it's easier for me to do a quick _caps-on, constant, caps-off_ than to hold
shift while typing it.

I imagine this isn't a particularly common use case among the general public,
though.

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rads
In emacs you can press C-Space, start typing, then use C-x C-u to capitalize
what you just typed.

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unicornporn
My Ctrl key is on Caps Lock Ctrl is still ctrl though, I like having two. When
in Windows via VMWare fusion it is much more comfortable to use the standard
ctrl key when doing ctrl + shift + right/left arrow.

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sirsean
I changed Caps Lock to Control, which is extremely helpful. Especially since
on the Macbook keyboard, it's tough to reach down and hit the Control button
without accidentally hitting Function instead.

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mcaruso
Super annoying. Very first thing I did when I got my MacBook was install
KeyRemap4MacBook (<http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook>) to switch Control
and Fn.

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jensnockert
I do the same, in addition I also use it to map caps lock to an unused key
(F14 or something) and use it for changing input sources.

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chrisbroadfoot
Caps -> Meta (alt/option on Mac)

Works a charm for me. I've used this for years. I don't feel that using it as
Ctrl is useful.

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Tycho
switching for Control would be nice. but even nicer would be switching for the
right-arrow key. reaching across with my right hand every time i want to
traverse a closed bracket in an IDE is ergonomically absurd

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Tycho
wow, i just noticed that Control-F does that on most Mac applications
(control-B moves the cursor back). Control-D deletes forwards, Control-E moves
cursor to end of line, and Control-A to start of line.

in nearly 20 years of Mac usage i've failed to realize that

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ams6110
This behavior came with OS X, a carry-forward from NEXTSTEP where these emacs-
inspired key bindings worked in all text input boxes. I do not believe that
Mac OS 9 and earlier had this.

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geuis
Nice tip. Just disabled it. Will see how well this works out.

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dedward
Did anyone with a mac NOT know that you could re-map keys from the keyboard
syspref?

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rkudeshi
Yes.

