Whenever discussing physical/logical layouts on keyboards and how to best tinker with them, common themes are how some keys aren't "used anymore", how "Num Lock should disappear" (true), "Scroll Lock is obsolete" (false), "Caps Lock takes valuable real state that would be better off as an Fn key" (true enough), etcetera.
While talking about it with some other people, I realized that I don't remember EVER
(with one exception; see below) seeing any of the three Lock keys being used with modifiers. Although the operating system will recognize the chords without issue, pressing Shift-Caps Lock, Ctrl-Caps Lock, Alt-Caps Lock (and any combination of the three mods) will ALL do the same as pressing Caps Lock without any mods at all; same for Num Lock and Scroll Lock...
... and I don't know of ANY operating system OR application where any combination of a lock key and modifiers is given any kind of meaning, unlike what happens with the other mod keys (think of Ctrl-F5, Alt-Shift-Tab, Ctrl-Esc, Shift-arrows, etc.). The ONE exception
(that I know of) is the IBM Model M SSK, which maps Shift-Scroll Lock to be Num Lock.
I wonder if could this be taken advantage of in a more or less standardized manner. For example, compact keyboards (think 75% and under) have a limited amount of keys, and mapping all the Lock functions to a single key would be advantageous. We could make Caps Lock behave like this:
- Caps Lock: Caps Lock on/off.
- Shift-Caps Lock: Scroll Lock on/off.
- Ctrl-Caps Lock: Num Lock on/off.
- Alt-Caps Lock: turn on or off the Windows keys.
But this, of course, won't have a chance at working if the Lock keys DO have chorded assignments in some widely (or not-so-widely) used program... so, to circle back to my initial question: have you ever seen mod-Lock chords used
anywhere?