[mdlug] Campaign to retire the Caps Lock key

[David D. Favro]

On Sun, 03 Dec 2006 11:42:24 -0500, Jeremy Bowers <jerf at jerf.org> wrote:
> Actually, that's what I mean. No amount of analyzing the Bible or 
> Shakespeare or any other corpus that people analysing keyboard layouts 
> use will show "Backspace" as a commonly used key. But I probably use it 
> more than, say, "Z" or "Q", and it deserves a better position than "the 
> far corner".

Right on.  And neither will that analysis show how much the "control" modifier key is used.  Of course, I assume that when someone sets out to design a keyboard layout, they realize this -- anyone stupid enough not to realize that modifier or other meta keystrokes don't remain in text is going to make one retarded keyboard.

Now, as a longtime emacs user, my control key is very important to me, and I very much regret that most keyboards these days stick it in a spot where it is guaranteed to give any emacs user repetitive strain injury (below the shift key, too low for the pinky to reach to for the thousands of times per day that it is needed).  So, on this "standard" keyboard layout (it didn't used to be standard but these days almost all keyboards seem to be doing it) I remap the caps-lock (next to the a, above the left-shift) to control.  I rarely need a caps-lock anyhow.  The problem is that when I boot from a live CD (or use someone else's machine), I have to manually go make the remap or I'm hopelessly turning on caps-lock by accident, meaning to press "control".  I have, for exactly this reason, made remastered Knoppix CDs with my layout already mapped for both the VT consoles and the X server.

Those of you who like the backspace enough to remap the caps-lock key to it (similar to http://colemak.com/) must, like me, really hate the enormous boot-shaped "Enter/Return" key that is popular these days, and makes that "far corner" backspace even more remote and very small.  Why would anyone need an enter key *that* large?  It reminds me of the one gigantic mouse-button on Apple computers -- do Mac users have fingers that thick they can't even keep from double-keying a 2-button or 3-button mouse?

Cheers,
David Favro