This is cute but it refuses to actually think about the problem of keyboard layout design. Take the reductio the other way and you end up adding keys to create a keyboard with a key for “the” and one for “and”, “or”, “but”, “of”... The author is just saying they want the QWERTY keyboard exactly as it is without actually thinking how this layout got there in the first place.
The Caps Lock key makes no sense in the context of a computer keyboard. Back in the days of typewriters when everything was a single monospaced font, typing in all caps was the only way to make something bold (there weren’t italics, bold, font sizes or different fonts). Having a convenient way to hold down the shift key was nice in this context. In the context of a computer keyboard that has multiple fonts, sizes and weights, it is a dumb key. Larry Tesler’s dictum “no modes” is immediately applicable. Steve Jobs tried to get rid of the caps lock key twice (once at Apple and once at Next). Google’s pixel books have replaced it with a search shortcut, which is not that useful but much better than having a key whose primary function is to mess up password entry and shout online without any extra effort for shouting. On a Mac keyboard there are a few common substitutions for caps lock that you can use. Any of these substitutions are preferable (I have it as Option for tab navigation but any of the other main hot keys make a better use of keyboard real estate).
The caps lock key as a key is essential, once remapped to something else. As a vim user, once remapped to Esc, everything makes much more sense, as your keyboard gets closer to the original keyboard on top of which vi was created https://images.app.goo.gl/wZkyxFosFF4jCRCJ8
But it's not necessarily a caps lock key, but an extra function key more easily accessible. There's quite a few keyboard designs out there that have button clusters for thumbs, so that you can use your thumbs for more than just pressing space.
In the same vein: I discovered the pleasure of the major modifier being under the thumb on MacOS, triply astounding on the MS Natural 4000 keyboard with its huge alt keys (they map to ‘command’ on Mac due to the position). And then I learned that Emacs was made for keyboards where the ‘control’ keys are under the thumbs.
I have an Ergodox EZ keyboard (which is programmable using QMK, or Oryx which is a wrapper around QMK) and I set caps lock to esc on tap but ctrl on hold.
QMK supports as much as 4 different behaviors per key:
- tap
- hold
- tap-hold
- double tap
And you can also set keys to change the layer each with their own behavior for
caps lock.
I'm sure many users don't use Home/End/PgUp/PgDown, since these keys are the first to go on majority of nowadays laptops. Even if there is plenty of space. And yet, I use these keys all the time. When I'm considering a laptop that's the first thing I check. Am I in a tiny minority?
There's Esc. I lost count of how many times I looked at a laptop or a mobile keyboard and got baffled because Esc, a very standard key with no replacement, wasn't there.
Also, the right Alt and Ctrl are quick to go. But somehow there are always buttons for the windows and pop-up keys.
Some laptops manufacturers on my country also think it's a good idea to remove the forward slash and quotation mark. That's because it's the 105° key, and they can't reuse the US 104 keys standard they got from abroad, but well, somehow they think it's not a problem at all.
On the other direction, it's a good thing that desktop keyboards stopped including a "power my computer down" button where most keyboards have delete.
Some people can not understand how standards bring value.
I had really hard time choosing laptop based on availability of those keys!! I really don't know how those thin mac users live... wait, isn't this (once again) one of those Apple's "minimalism" trends? I think so.
On my 2015 MacBook Pro, ⌘+[arrow keys] are respectively mapped to home/end/PgUp/PgDn. That's how I live. In fact I find this interface easier to use than the discrete home/end/PgUp/PgDn keys on my external keyboard, since I have to look at the keyboard to find those as they're not near the home row.
If you’re old time desktop user you wouldn’t have to look for these keys, they’re at the same place for decades. Heck, I even don’t know which combination I’m pressing to go to the begining of page or line, that’s muscle memory at this point.
That said, I acknowledge that you have your own prefered way, and that’s how it should be. As it also should be that these extra keys exist at least on bigger laptops, if not on ultraportables.
I remember using a laptop with Home/End/PgUp/PgDown on Fn + arrow keys. Using those felt very natural. I wish it was more common so I could have the same on my desktop keyboard.
Yes, we are a tiny minority. I refuse to compromise on this, and still use a ThinkPad with a 7-row keyboard, but most people have just given up already and went with the mainstream crap. :-(
> The Caps Lock key makes no sense in the context of a computer keyboard.
Remapped to <Compose>, the Caps-Lock key is essential for someone who writes in many different languages. Removing it would not make me very happy.
That being said: I'd love someone to build a modern, USB/Bluetooth-enabled variant of the old Space-Cadet keyboard [1]. Would pay good money for it, too.
Given that even Apple not only keeps the Caps key, but also has it traditionally big, I suppose the market demands it. But then who are those people who uses it?
Props to Apple, which in 2022 still provides an easy option to remap caps more or less straight in the keyboard configuration. And actually provides that even on iOS (which I was stoked to discover), though the remapping options are limited.
And boo to microsoft, the only significant OS where that’s not a native option, you need the powertoys and in my experience it’s quite unreliable: regularly capslock will revert and you have to go into the ‘toys and flip it off and on again.
I’ve never looked but I guess it’s some sort of registry setting which every update resets, without the ‘toys being aware of the info?
I use caps lock very often, because when touch-typing it's A LOT EASIER than keeping changing the finger I use to press Shift on the correct side of the keyboard.
And if you think "well, just keep shift pressed and use another finger to type what you would have typed with your pinky" it just means you're either not touch typing or doing it "wrong" :) There's a reason there are two shift keys on a keyboard, yet I rarely hear people complaining about this but plenty complain about the "useless" caps lock.
TL;DR: you can pry caps lock from my cold dead hands. I need it.
(ETA: maybe I should just remap double-shift to caps and be done with it, but that's just one more thing I have to learn and one more configuration I need to do on a new machine).
The thing is: I don't have a problem with my current layout (and, as I said, adding sticky shift is one more thing to configure on new machines or after a OS reinstall). Also, I've been using that key for its original purpose for some 25 years. I don't see myself learning that again too easily. But I might try to see if it sticks (pun not intended).
What surprises me are people who consider a certain key "useless" simply because they don't use it, so it should be removed/reassigned. And there's plenty of them in this thread who think that I'm doing it wrong by using the key for the exact job it was meant for.
I must admit I was among those people. I have not seen anybody using it. But then most people I have seen typing or discussing Caps are not touch-typist.
> typing in all caps was the only way to make something bold
Thinking of it, with modern messaging apps that support text formatting, it would be useful to have dedicated caps-lock-style keys for bold, italic, monospace, etc.
Writing out constant names is a minor and rare event (even more so with any editor featuring autocompletion). This does not come close to “useful”, let alone extremely so.
The value of capslock is that it provides an essentially blank key which can be remapped to something useful e.g. Ctrl, Esc, Meta, …
A good keyboard doesn't really need re-mapping, as the ctrl, esc and meta/alt keys are already readily available. You could argue for mapping caps lock to Super or Hyper if you're an emacs user maybe, but I for one never felt the need.
Exactly as the article mentions, caps lock is a nice to have, though rare, key. Removing or remapping it will complicate your typing in those scenarios for sure. if you find a better use for that space where it simplifies other more common scenarios, great. But just removing it would be idiotic.
> A good keyboard doesn't really need re-mapping, as the ctrl, esc and meta/alt keys are already readily available.
They’re not, unless by “good keyboard” you mean “custom layout”. On all the keyboards I’ve ever known, the almost entirely useless capslock takes one of the more valuable places on the keyboard just left of the home row. It’s the modifier key which requires the least movement by far, yet with a native function which is almost entirely worthless.
I’d like to see your hypothetical keyboard where control (to say nothing of esc) is anywhere near as easy to reach, despite both being used significantly more than caps, and caps being trivially and fully dispensable with unless your days are spent writing SQL with all keywords in all caps.
> You could argue for mapping caps lock to Super or Hyper if you're an emacs user maybe
No, you really could not, unless you’re part of the minority which flies with fully custom keybindings. But even then control is such a central modifier of emacs that making it more accessible and require less contorsion tends to yield the highest bang for your buck.
You could always remap the old control to super or hyper instead of having two control keys I guess.
Personally I use the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard [0], and holding Ctrl down is as easy or easier than caps lock, particularly for Emacs C-x or C-c, where I can use my right pinky on C-. Also true for Ctrl+z, a pretty common combination in most modern UIs.
It's true that Esc is nowhere near as easy to reach, so if I used vim I'm sure I'd like to switch them (alt/meta is also easy to reach for me, so I never felt the need to use Esc for Meta in Emacs; and having two Alt keys anyway makes it better).
> I’d like to see your hypothetical keyboard where control (to say nothing of esc) is anywhere near as easy to reach
With multi-function keys (as supported by e.g. QMK-powered keyboards, or software like kmonad) allows adding multiple functions to a key.
e.g. "tap-hold": "tap CapsLock key sends 'Escape', hold CapsLock key sends 'Ctrl'" would be useful for someone who uses Vim and/or Emacs.
Taking 'tap-hold' a bit further, you can try putting the modifiers (which are only useful when held) under the home row keys: putting Alt, Gui, Ctrl, Shift underneath ASDF, (and reverse: Shift, Ctrl, Gui, Alt underneath JKL;). -- So called "home row modifiers".
The advantage is not needing to move the hand, and not needing to use the weaker pinky finger. Although, it can take some getting used to.
Holding down shift is not really a problem for constant names since you need it for the underscores anyway. You can type CONSTANT_NAME without lifting the shift key but with caps lock you still need to use shift anyway.
You can't "hold down" shift when writing CONSTANT_NAME if you're doing any kind of touch typing. You constantly have to switch between pressing left shift or right shift, so basically you're writing 13 key-combinations. With caps lock, you only need to use a key combination once (for _), instead of 13 times without.
Any kind of touch typing? No, I don't agree with that. I can type 140+ wpm and don't look at the keyboard, and I can hold down shift while typing CONSTANT_NAME. Pinky on shift, remaining 9 fingers type CONSTANT_NAME. The pinky would not be involved with this particular constant even if it were free. The kind of touch typing you learned in school has a problem with this, maybe.
A is normally typed using the left pinky, so holding left shift will force you to use the left ring finger for it.
To be fair, on some keyboards, including the one I use, it's easy to reach both the right and left shift keys, so it's easy to alternate shift keys as needed to avoid using other fingers or moving your hand from the home row.
I guess it's important to note that I would use the right shift for this. I have the ability to choose on-the-fly rather than be forced into one or the other by a typing method that I learned in school. I could still do it with the left shift but it's not the one I would choose for this.
It's probably fairly obvious what I think about the taught-at-school touch typing method. It's a decent middle-of-the-road option that's intended to be easy to teach and to work for most people in most situations; that's all.
Why is the constant screaming at me? Why is the fact that it's a constant important enough to be encoded in the styling of the letters, but not important enough to be encoded in the name. Why isn't the IDE or the compiler keeping track of the constantness of the variable and reminding me to not do the wrong thing? If they can and are, why am I not trusting them?
And if they can't, why am I writing in a language that doesn't even have JavaScript levels of a type system?
That's still 3 extra key strokes, including a key combination, to go from writing the constant name back to writing the next word (with caps lock: caps lock, constant_name, caps lock; without caps lock: constant_name, Esc, g, shift+u, b, i - you also need w, i to get back to the end of CONSTANT_NAME and keep typing). Also, switching mode, applying a command, then switching mode again versus pressing a key for uppercase and pressing it again for lowercase is a much bigger distraction from my point of view (emacs user) but maybe you actually get used to that using vim.
I disagree. It is useful to maintain caps lock for typing but allow shift presses for keybind combinations. Having to re-enter caps lock after every shift combination would be annoying
The idea of somebody slamming down both shift keys before getting into an internet yelling match is pretty hilarious. I think both caps lock and this ULTIMATE SHIFT idea are probably both not necessary, but I have to thank you for putting the funny image in my head.
«Caps Lock» key should be renamed to just «Lock». Lock+Shift will behave as Caps Lock, Lock+Tab may behave as Enable Automatic Autocompletion, Lock+Alt may behave as switch to alternate alphabet, etc.
The Caps Lock key makes no sense in the context of a computer keyboard. Back in the days of typewriters when everything was a single monospaced font, typing in all caps was the only way to make something bold (there weren’t italics, bold, font sizes or different fonts). Having a convenient way to hold down the shift key was nice in this context. In the context of a computer keyboard that has multiple fonts, sizes and weights, it is a dumb key. Larry Tesler’s dictum “no modes” is immediately applicable. Steve Jobs tried to get rid of the caps lock key twice (once at Apple and once at Next). Google’s pixel books have replaced it with a search shortcut, which is not that useful but much better than having a key whose primary function is to mess up password entry and shout online without any extra effort for shouting. On a Mac keyboard there are a few common substitutions for caps lock that you can use. Any of these substitutions are preferable (I have it as Option for tab navigation but any of the other main hot keys make a better use of keyboard real estate).