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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: lorem3k on Mon, 27 February 2012, 23:48:22
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Does anybody do this? I personally think this makes more sense than mapping it to Backspace and especially more than mapping it to Control, because it's in the about same position relative to your left hand as Enter is to your right hand (on an ANSI keyboard), and you use enter more frequently than Backspace or Control.
I'm going to give it a try for a few days. I've previously tried using it as Control but I found I never used it because I had already memorized all the key combos I use with the standard left Control.
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How often you press Backspace? How often you press Enter?
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Personally I didn't like moving the right hand so much when reaching for Backspace, so Colemak's Backspace on Caps Lock was a very welcome addition. I'd recommend it to anyone, regardless of other layout choice.
On the TrulyErgonomic (http://www.trulyergonomic.com/) I had Ctrl right to the left of the A key (the normal Caps Lock position), and it was quite nice to have a Ctrl key close to the home row too. Note as a Mac user the Ctrl key isn't used all that often though; the main Mac modifier is Command, which got the highly coveted left thumb spot. It wasn't necessary to move Backspace because it was already somewhere close.
Nowadays (using a Kinesis Advantage (http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/contoured.htm)) I have both Backspace and Enter almost right under my thumbs, which feels great.
Anyway, on a standard keyboard I felt that the reach for the original Backspace key was much worse than the reach for the Enter key, so I preferred getting Backspace closer to the home row. But whatever floats your boat.
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How often you press Backspace? How often you press Enter?
I press Enter a lot more often, so it also saves some strain for my right pinky. Usually when I hit Backspace I pick up my whole right hand and hit it with my ring finger, it feels more natural to me, so I don't have much of a problem with the reach.
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Easily achieved with a one liner in an autohotkey script
CapsLock:: send {enter}
I always find myself hitting ctrl backspace to delete full words, but if you use it for your browser or aynthing (type google into address bar and hit ctrl+ enter), add this line as well
^CapsLock:: send ^{enter}
you can still activate capslock with alt+caps if needed running both of these
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I press Enter a lot more often, so it also saves some strain for my right pinky. Usually when I hit Backspace I pick up my whole right hand and hit it with my ring finger, it feels more natural to me, so I don't have much of a problem with the reach.
Please install a keycounter and check the numbers. Unless you are typist with 99% or more accuracy, Backspace is a more often pressed key.
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I use the Caps Lock key as Enter. I find it convinient to have enter keys on both sides.
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I find ctrl more more useful. I remapped ctrl+h to backspace, ctrl+w to ctrl+backspace, and ctrl+space to enter, so I rarerly have to leave the home row.
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I remapped caplock to shift. Took a bit of time to get used to it, but I saw noticeable improvement. The sideways movement gave me less strain than the usual bottom left location.
Thats interesting though, I'll try it out with capslock as backspace.
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I map to delete. I find it much more useful than backspace while typing
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yes, i remap Caps Lock to Enter and i am happy with it. For Backspace i use my right thumb to press the key right next to space. AltGr comes next...
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I'm using a UK ISO board and QWERTY layout with my capslock key sending backspace. I've considered using it to send enter, but settled (for now) with using lalt+j.
I'm using AHK to send shift when space is held down. This works well and has made both left and right shift keys available, so I might consider using rshift to send enter.
The ISO enter key is just too far away! The TypeMatrix or better still Kinesis Advantage both appear to offer the most superior solution to moving the workload to stronger fingers.
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MV