Least Used Keys: Scroll Lock or Pause or Insert

[Karura]

Message to moderators, please make me a poll with: 1) Scroll Lock 2) Pause 3) Insert  (This will make it easier to tally the count!)

Hello,

Since there are a lot of custom layouts such as 75% and the Lightsaver that do not have enough space for every single key, often times you are going to have to compromise and remove one or two keys.

Which of these keys are least used, and would be least missed to you? I want to focus on these keys, since they are usually on the right side of the keyboard.

I also know that a lot of people don't use Capslock and other keys, but please focus on the keys listed in the topic, since it will be too much to discuss 

Also, if anyone actually uses these keys, please say for what purpose, and why it is important.

Some things that people have pointed out: Scroll Lock is good for excel, some people use Insert, and I'm not too sure what Pause does, but apparently it's used to sent in interrupt command.

Discuss which of these keys you use/don't use and which you are fine with omitting from a custom layout

[Hypersphere]

My RF 87u has Print Screen, Num Lock, and Pause along the top right. I use all three of these.

The next row down, it has Insert, Home, and Page Up. I use all of these.

My RF 87u does not have Scroll Lock, and so I do not use it.

[Puddsy]

According to WhatPulse, my least used key is end, with only 12 presses since March 12th of this year.

[hwood34]

Well I've only pressed keys on that entire cluster a total of 13 times in 147 days so...

[MGH]

What do you use to track usage?

[hwood34]

What do you use to track usage?

WhatPulse

[inanis]

I use insert all the time. When logging into a Virtual Machine Ctrl, Alt, Insert is the equivalent of Crtl, Alt, Delete. I probably hit that insert key 50 times in a work day.

[daerid]

Scroll Lock. I use pause and insert all day long.

[ConscienceDrop]

pause/break literally has NO FUNCTION unless a program incorporates it

by far the most useless key on any keyboard.

[dorkvader]

I would like to note that using them as a general KVM switch Key or for push to talk doesn't count

I use insert all the time. I don't have occasion to use pause that much. Scroll lock has it's uses and gets used occasionally (I have to work in microsoft office sometimes)

pause/break literally has NO FUNCTION unless a program incorporates it

by far the most useless key on any keyboard.

so...
The same can be said for any key. Not sure what your point is.

Pause/break does have a purpose, especially if you're looking through quickly scrolling text during boot.

it is interesting to note that it's usually the only key on a modern keyboard that you can't hold down (usually).

[daerid]

pause/break literally has NO FUNCTION unless a program incorporates it

by far the most useless key on any keyboard.

ummm... so? the programs I use on a day to day basis incorporate it. Far from "useless"

[ConscienceDrop]

pause/break literally has NO FUNCTION unless a program incorporates it

by far the most useless key on any keyboard.

ummm... so? the programs I use on a day to day basis incorporate it. Far from "useless"

but its only used by those programs because it is totally unused by anything else.

thats my point.

change the word "useless" to "purposeless, and therefor mappable" but my point is the same. it was a key for breaking connections on telecom boards

[Karura]

According to WhatPulse, my least used key is end, with only 12 presses since March 12th of this year.

What about out of Insert, Scroll Lock, and Pause?

I use insert all the time. When logging into a Virtual Machine Ctrl, Alt, Insert is the equivalent of Crtl, Alt, Delete. I probably hit that insert key 50 times in a work day.

Cool, I did not know that it was such a function, thanks for explaining! So that said, out of the three, which one do you use least?

Scroll Lock. I use pause and insert all day long.

Can you elaborate on what it does for your purpose, and how you use it?

pause/break literally has NO FUNCTION unless a program incorporates it

by far the most useless key on any keyboard.

So relatively, do you use scroll lock and insert more?

[dorkvader]

pause/break literally has NO FUNCTION unless a program incorporates it

by far the most useless key on any keyboard.

ummm... so? the programs I use on a day to day basis incorporate it. Far from "useless"

but its only used by those programs because it is totally unused by anything else.

thats my point.

change the word "useless" to "purposeless, and therefor mappable" but my point is the same. it was a key for breaking connections on telecom boards

It's also a key to break quickly scrolling output so you can actually read it. The times I have used it, it has been instrumental in determination.

The return key used to be to cause a new line and carriage return. The fact that we now use it to return entered data (or "enter") does not make it any less useful.

Just because it has ancient history associated with it, and just because you don't use it much does not mean it has no use. It has a use. I have used it for that use. it is neither useless nor purposeless.

[Moralless]

pause/break literally has NO FUNCTION unless a program incorporates it

by far the most useless key on any keyboard.

This is an unfair argument. There's a lot of programs that don't incorporate certain keys, a lot of games don't really need the use of the F-row or del, ins, home, pg up/down etc does that make it useless? I agree that there aren't a lot of programs that need a pause/break  key but the ones that do allow the use of it, the pause key is far from useless. Hasu's TMK firmware uses the pause key to be able to load new firmware into the teensy without you having to open up your keyboard and pressing the hardware reset button on the teensy. This proved really helpful when I was building my custom keyboard since for the first week I was changing my layout everyday even now I still play around with what I can do with my Fn layers.

On topic, for me my least used key has got to be the insert key which I only really use when I have to correct a body of text and I'm too lazy to reach over to my mouse and highlight the incorrect text .

[daerid]

but its only used by those programs because it is totally unused by anything else.

thats my point.

change the word "useless" to "purposeless, and therefor mappable" but my point is the same. it was a key for breaking connections on telecom boards

but it's not purposeless. It's purpose is to interrupt or pause something

[daerid]

Scroll Lock. I use pause and insert all day long.

Can you elaborate on what it does for your purpose, and how you use it?

I'm not sure which key you are referring to. Pause/Break I use during software development all the time. Ctrl+Pause tells Visual Studio to interrupt the currently running build, and it also send a SIGINT (I believe) to bash.

[rowdy]

Insert - yes, use it on a daily basis as Shift-Insert does paste in PuTTY.

Pause - yes, sometimes, when scripting in DOS it is easier to pause the output with Pause than Ctrl-S (and works slightly more reliably).

Scroll Lock - not really.  It makes Excel go silly and even less usable than usual.

[jacobolus]

All three of these are utterly useless and a waste of space.

[Peinful]

My least used key is the bottom right enter with the numbers, that key is effing useless. It doesnt even do the same thing as the enter key in the general typinv area

[Karura]

My least used key is the bottom right enter with the numbers, that key is effing useless. It doesnt even do the same thing as the enter key in the general typinv area

What about between Insert, Scroll Lock, and Pause?

[Peinful]

Uhm i use insert sometimes when i write my essays, and pause works to pause some of my games. Same with scrollock i bind marcos on it in one of my games, cant really find a use for the bottom right enter tough. That thing is so useless

[StylinGreymon]

I use insert all the time, but I have never used pause or scroll lock ever.

[inanis]

I use insert all the time. When logging into a Virtual Machine Ctrl, Alt, Insert is the equivalent of Crtl, Alt, Delete. I probably hit that insert key 50 times in a work day.

Cool, I did not know that it was such a function, thanks for explaining! So that said, out of the three, which one do you use least?

Between Scroll Lock and Pause/Break, I probably use Pause/Break the least. Scroll Lock is also Num Lock on my SSK, and I use that with some frequency. It is also how to use my remote KVM (Scroll Lock x2, Print Screen is the combo to display attached machines). If neither of those scenarios count as Scroll Lock usage, then it is pretty much a toss up.

[katushkin]

Insert - yes, use it on a daily basis as Shift-Insert does paste in PuTTY.

Ohhhh, really? That's awesome... Stealing!

[Findecanor]

I have Prt Sc, Scroll Lock and Pause mapped to Media keys... and I use them all the time.
I almost never use Insert, except on the MS-DOS prompt ...

My least used keys are;
- The function keys. Except in MS Visual Studio. Otherwise I mostly use Linux, where I never use them.
- The key above Tab to the left of 1. I use Swedish layout, and it has § (apparently ...) and I can't remember ever using that symbol. With Shift and Alt Gr the symbols are ½, £ and ³. The latter two are also available on Alt Gr-3 and Shift-Alt Gr-3.

[berserkfan]

I use all keys on a keyboard. Including these three. Every hour.

It's called autohotkey.

Just map these guys to do something for you. I do that for the winkeys too, which is why I really hate winkeyless keyboards. I am missing one of my most important function keys when some idiot creates a winkeyless. Duh, when you are gaming just replace the winkey with a keyblocker if you don't want to use autohotkey!

Shameless plug, but I'm selling relegendable keycaps. I collected a lot of these. Why? So that I can create macros, and have keycaps to remind me of what I programmed on a particular key.

[Jotokun]

Every once in a while, I'll use shift+insert to paste stuff into a terminal window without having to reach for my mouse to middle click. Scroll Lock and Pause are both completely unused for me.

[mogo]

It's a tie between [Scroll Lock] and [Pause/Break] for me. I personally don't hit them, ever. Insert still has occasional use, but not often.

[jameslr]

In windows I use win+pause to bring up system properties. I don't use it daily but I miss it when I do need to use it. Don't use scroll lock at all. I use insert for various text editing functions across multiple apps.

[mr.squishy]

I have the Scroll Lock LED indicator on my keyboard set up to blink whenever my computer gets a packet. The key itself is utterly useless.

[AlexK6]

I find all three useless. Thing is, Pause and Scroll Lock don't bother me as much because they're in a separate cluster. Insert though... I hate it when I accidentally press it instead of Delete and then wonder what the hell is wrong. At least many editors let me know that it's on.

I'm going to AutoHotkey all of them.

[Touch_It]

Don't use scroll lock or pause break more than maybe a few times a year, with that being said though I think I would miss them more than home or end keys. TBH though I think i could do away with all the keys in that area except print scrn.  I use that a lot.

[Vibex]

I use Insert all the time, but I don't think I've ever intentionally used pause or Scroll Lock

[ullr]

Insert frequently - shift+insert is paste in terminal emulators and other applications, insert/replace mode in everything.

Pause Break and Scroll Lock never. I don't recall ever using those keys for anything.

[Richard Eul]

Pause button for me.

I use Scroll Lock when I want to bring up a portion of the spreadsheet/document a little higher/lower using my arrow keys. Page Up / Down will change your text entry position, and while the scroll wheel does not change the text entry position, but it scrolls the document in a fixed n-lines per notch.

I use the Insert button to allow me to overwrite certain characters / numbers as I type. But then at times I highlight the characters and type over them rather than doing this, which makes Insert the second least button I ever use.

[spremino]

Pause: I have never used it.
In the past, I had remapped Scroll Lock to something.
Sometimes I have used Insert.

Insert with Shift or Control is used in alternative chords for Copy and Paste; therefore I would leave it alone because I think that people that use the mouse with their right hand may rely on such alternative chords.

[RoflCopter4]

My least used key is the bottom right enter with the numbers, that key is effing useless. It doesnt even do the same thing as the enter key in the general typinv area

Lies and slander. In Wolfram Mathematica the num enter key does the same thing as pressing shift-enter normally: it actually submits the input for evaluation as opposed to putting in a line space. It's extremely convenient, way better than using shift-enter. I'm much too lazy to press two keys when I could just press one.

[Oobly]

Scroll lock.

I can honestly say I have NEVER used it. I do use both Insert and Pause/Break now and then, I'd say Insert is more important to me than Pause/Break.

I can happily live without all three, though.

[Data]

Scroll Lock, as evidenced by the thick layer of dust on it.   

To this day I still don't even know WTF that key is supposed to do.  I press it and nothing happens.

At least I know what Insert is supposed to do, even if I never actually use it like that (but it does get used for games sometimes).

[spremino]

In the past, I had remapped Scroll Lock to something.

I forgot to mention that I remapped Scroll Lock because I knew it wasn't used by applications.  Any other free key would have been fine.

[user 18]

My least used key is 100% scroll lock. Pause gets a bit of use because I can use it to pause games. Insert gets used (rarely) when I'm too lazy to select text.

[RoflCopter4]

I guess I should note that I usually have Insert set as the key that brings up a FRAPS FPS counter in games, since pretty much no game ever uses it for anything.

[minh278]

I think my least used key is Pause. Anyone else mess with the scroll lock sometimes to see the pretty leds turn on and off? and i use the insert in microsoft word quite frequently.

[rowdy]

Anyone else mess with the scroll lock sometimes to see the pretty leds turn on and off?

I do sometimes, I like the shiny flashing lights