Just remapped Caps Lock to Control

[daerid]

After a few hours adjustment, I can safely say:

HOLY S**T my left hand feels soooooooooooo much better. It's a much better position for control, ergonomically. Between the lower-left control and qwerty layout, it's like keyboard makers of the 20th century hated their hands and decided to take it out on the rest of us.

[nolliepoper]

I just remapped my Caps Lock key to Backspace last night, so now I have two Backspace keys.
By no means am I used to using it while typing yet but at least the stupid Caps Lock LED doesn't turn on while I'm playing Starcraft.
Also added backspace to select idle worker, when game starts I just click nexus tap e then Control Caps Lock to select all works then have my mouse lined up for the split.
TLDR: Control Caps Lock is easier to tap than Control F1.

[czarek]

Well best option for Caps Lock / Ctrl key is on Amiga keyboards:

[Grimey]

I just remapped my Caps Lock key to Backspace last night, so now I have two Backspace keys.

Same for me at work.  I leave CAPSLOCK alone at home as I use it for my push to talk button for gaming.

[guilleguillaume]

I did it weeks ago ( Probably a month) by using the dip switches on the Realforce 87U and Poker X and it is the best change I've done.

[Lanx]

After a few hours adjustment, I can safely say:

HOLY S**T my left hand feels soooooooooooo much better. It's a much better position for control, ergonomically. Between the lower-left control and qwerty layout, it's like keyboard makers of the 20th century hated their hands and decided to take it out on the rest of us.

i'm guessing you're a programmer. Only programmers really ever talk about ctrl to caps lock (i haven' programmed in 20years and failed at it so i don't even know/remember what ctrl would be for).

[flyball]

i'm guessing you're a programmer. Only programmers really ever talk about ctrl to caps lock (i haven' programmed in 20years and failed at it so i don't even know/remember what ctrl would be for).

copy and paste?

[rodya]

Well best option for Caps Lock / Ctrl key is on Amiga keyboards:

Best option IMHO is no caps lock.  Do you ever find yourself using it?

i'm guessing you're a programmer. Only programmers really ever talk about ctrl to caps lock (i haven' programmed in 20years and failed at it so i don't even know/remember what ctrl would be for).

Emacs, command-line editing, and to a lesser extent vim.

[flyball]

Best option IMHO is no caps lock.  Do you ever find yourself using it?

its useful for ancient oses

[shrap]

I use Ctrl all the time for just web browsing.

Ctrl-w for closing a window/tab
Ctrl-t for opening up a new tab
Ctrl-n for opening up a new window
Ctrl-l for switching to the URL bar
Ctrl-pgup/down for switching tabs

I switched Caps lock to ... something else a few years ago, but since I never got used to pressing the caps lock button I would never press it no matter what it's mapped to.

[mian2222]

I did this a long time ago. Makes everything faster. When I was playing HoN a little more seriously I remapped it as Alt so I could use items faster.

[hcry4]

One of the main reasons I love the HHKB is the Ctrl key.

[daerid]

i'm guessing you're a programmer. Only programmers really ever talk about ctrl to caps lock (i haven' programmed in 20years and failed at it so i don't even know/remember what ctrl would be for).

You would be correct sir. Although, to be honest, I'm mainly just a "power user". Most of my Control key usage happens with Firefox, to be honest. Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W, and Ctrl+L

I rarely use Ctrl when programming, except for copy/paste.

[czarek]

Well for me it's quite obvious to have Caps Lock remapped to Control for 2 reasons. I'm used to Amiga keyboard, and now I use OS X on my primary workstation which requires Cmd / Meta keys which Model M doesn't have so I had to remap Alt to Cmd, Ctrl to Option (alt), and Caps Lock to Control. It feels great now. Also I use Ctrl only for terminal and text editing - old school shortcuts like Ctrl+A to go back to beginning, Ctrl+W to delete (well cut technically) previous word, Ctrl+K to delete everything to the end of line, etc. Very useful extension to what you already have in the system. Works on most Unixes and Unix likes.

[Moratorius]

I'll chime in that I do this as well, and never regretted the switch when I made it years ago using the registry.  One downside is that I find myself hitting caps lock thinking it's lctrl on other computers.  Thankfully now I just carry around a portable keyboard that has a builtin switch for it (noppoo ftw).

[Saturn]

but how will you yell on the internet?

anyway, i'm surprised i don't see more people mapping it to esc instead

[duncan]

Do you ever find yourself using it?

Yep. About half the tools I use trace their lineage back to the 1960s and require uppercase only coding.

When you deal with big-iron mainframes you need stuff that stops me being able to set up a board the way I would ideally like to. For a while I kept 2 boards plugged in to have access to  lesser used keys I had mapped away but that's almost worse than just putting up with a more standard layout.

As a different idea that is not as good but is better than the standard layout, IMO, is to remap the Alt and Ctrl keys to swapped positions. This puts the Ctrl key in the location of the Command key in OS X. This is not as good as the Sun layout (Caps lock as Ctrl) but is better than the standard layout. The RF 86U allows this by a dip switch which is super handy if you have to move between multiple machines as no software changes are needed.

Why IBM or MS or whoever it was that decided to stick the Ctrl out on the edge of the board where it makes the most common chords the hardest to achieve deserves the self shame that I am confident they feel every night before they go to sleep.

[zmurf]

i just remapped my caps lock key to backspace last night, so now i have two backspace keys.
By no means am i used to using it while typing yet but at least the stupid caps lock led doesn't turn on while i'm playing starcraft.
Also added backspace to select idle worker, when game starts i just click nexus tap e then control caps lock to select all works then have my mouse lined up for the split.
Tldr: Control caps lock is easier to tap than control f1.

+1

:d

[rodya]

@flyball and @duncan

Oh okay.  I grew up with the rise of GNU/Linux, and don't really know (or work with) anything older.

Why IBM or MS or whoever it was that decided to stick the Ctrl out on the edge of the board where it makes the most common chords the hardest to achieve deserves the self shame that I am confident they feel every night before they go to sleep.

lol, I hope he makes amends somehow.  That kind of guilt will drive a man mad.

And while we're at it, does anyone else wish the left and right ends of the spacebar were separate keys to be turned into another modifier?  (I don't use the whole length of the spacebar)  It'd allow another layer/more chords within easy reach.

[daerid]

And while we're at it, does anyone else wish the left and right ends of the spacebar were separate keys to be turned into another modifier?  (I don't use the whole length of the spacebar)  It'd allow another layer/more chords within easy reach.

Hell yes. I found that I only space with my right thumb anyways (I know many people alternate or are left thumbed as well), but I'd love to actually get some use out of my left thumb other than Cmd on Mac and Alt on Windows.

[iindigo]

I remapped Caps Lock to Control myself a few days ago...

...and as it turns out, one really doesn't use Control much under OS X. I notice little to no difference. It's nice not being able to accidentally enable caps lock though.

[flyball]

I remapped Caps Lock to Control myself a few days ago...

...and as it turns out, one really doesn't use Control much under OS X. I notice little to no difference. It's nice not being able to accidentally enable caps lock though.

try command for osx, i think control only really gets used for terminal things

[iindigo]

try command for osx, i think control only really gets used for terminal things

I might, but the thumb-ready location of Command is nowhere near as annoying or inconvenient as the pinky-stretching modern Control placement, so the improvement won't be quite as drastic.

[Lanx]

Hell yes. I found that I only space with my right thumb anyways (I know many people alternate or are left thumbed as well), but I'd love to actually get some use out of my left thumb other than Cmd on Mac and Alt on Windows.

[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 28956[/ATTACH]
since i've been using the Kinesis i've taken the thumb idea area, and replaced it this way, you can fit 5 buttons where a space bar is, they look off center because the switches are put exactly where my thumb positions are, so that's why they're angled, could prolly fit 1 more kye in there otherwise. Spacebar is such a waste... now that i've seen it this way.