Very similar to <i>A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling</i> by M. J. Shields (frequently misattributed to Mark Twain):<p>"For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.<p>Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.<p>Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld."
The link at the end that (I assume) prompted this write-up:<p><a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1687635" rel="nofollow">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1687635</a><p>(Speaking as someone whose native language is non-Latin-based, I think it was a very bad idea. Worse still is their attitude that if some website becomes unusable, "just file a bug".)
The title is a reference to this story by Harlan Ellison, which won a Hugo award in 1968:<p>[NSFW - contains graphic descriptions of torture and other severe violence]<p><a href="https://wjccschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/01/I-Have-No-Mouth-But-I-Must-Scream-by-Harlan-Ellison.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://wjccschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/01/I...</a>
This is exactly how it feels with every iteration of my company's new design. Let's disappear scroll bars! Let's hide the menu! Let's order sub-menus by frequency of use, rather than by alphabetical order! Let's get rid of border lines around text entry boxes! Let's make clickable and non-clickable text the same font, style, and color! Let's--<p>I <i>do not understand</i> why designers are so insistent on making tools so difficult and unpleasant to use.
This is cute but it refuses to actually think about the problem of keyboard layout design. Take the reductio the other way and you end up adding keys to create a keyboard with a key for “the” and one for “and”, “or”, “but”, “of”... The author is just saying they want the QWERTY keyboard exactly as it is without actually thinking how this layout got there in the first place.<p>The Caps Lock key makes no sense in the context of a computer keyboard. Back in the days of typewriters when everything was a single monospaced font, typing in all caps was the only way to make something bold (there weren’t italics, bold, font sizes or different fonts). Having a convenient way to hold down the shift key was nice in this context. In the context of a computer keyboard that has multiple fonts, sizes and weights, it is a dumb key. Larry Tesler’s dictum “no modes” is immediately applicable. Steve Jobs tried to get rid of the caps lock key twice (once at Apple and once at Next). Google’s pixel books have replaced it with a search shortcut, which is not that useful but much better than having a key whose primary function is to mess up password entry and shout online without any extra effort for shouting. On a Mac keyboard there are a few common substitutions for caps lock that you can use. Any of these substitutions are preferable (I have it as Option for tab navigation but any of the other main hot keys make a better use of keyboard real estate).
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA</a>
While it's an amusing story, it feels like the analogue doesn't really work. In reality low value options are removed because few users use it. In the story options (keys) are being removed even when used by absolutely everybody, as long as the relative frequency of the key is low. That's a huge difference.<p>And of course you don't evaluate an experiment to remove an option like in the story, by looking at before/after rates on how often the option is triggered.
It's e.g. pretty clearly not what happened in the the Firefox encoding menu example that motivated the rant.
In my opinion this was already done with the nightmare that have been the function keys in laptops for three decades<p>I use F2 and F6 and screen contrast buttons every single day. And the FN lock is used just infrequently enough that there is ZERO possiblity I will remember its state at any given moment, especially considering reboots or sleeps that may toggle it. And I use it just enough that it isn't worth spending 5 seconds to move my hands away to figure out its state, consequently every single time I hit an FN key I get an undesired result from pressing it. For the love of god we are talking about adding 12 keys to the keyboard, they can be half-height, or simply making the FN lock into a shift function with no lock capability to GUARANTEE determinist results when pressing a key and the lock is in an unknown state. Can we please start a petition.
The perfect keyboard already exists[1] and it also has a caps lock key[2].<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/dkter/aaaaa" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/dkter/aaaaa</a>
[2] <a href="https://github.com/dkter/aaaaa/pull/13" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/dkter/aaaaa/pull/13</a>
Does anyone actually use CapsLock (the functionality*), and if so what for?<p>*(Not counting remapping the <i>physical button</i> to some other, useful, function).
Honestly why does a foldable display seem like a good idea? It’s not. It’s crap. If you have any understanding of hardware whatsoever you’ll be able to devine why a foldable screen is going to fail in about 5 seconds and therefore is a bad idea.<p>On the face of it, foldable screens seem awesome. Like the future. Only problem is that they are still the future.
Caps Lock is a genuinely useless key: two-shift caps lock is a feature (on some OSes) whereby hitting both shifts toggles caps lock. You can free up that keycap for a brighter future, but still have your caps-lock functionality for when you need to scream at some identifiers.
Well... All of my keyboards have their capslocks keys remapped as escape. There literally hasn't been a capslock key on any of my keyboards for years. This has been a great boon to how I type.<p>Originally, I remapped the keys this way due to my macbook's touchbar that removed a functional escape key. The frequency is far higher for me to use escape than capslock, which I realized that I actually never used. When I need capitalization, I use the shift key.
The Alcatel One Touch Max DB[0] could receive SMS messages in upper and lowercase, but could only send in uppercase. I read through the whole manual at the time and there was nothing about it. Fond memories of always seeming like I was shouting at people in replies.<p>[0]<a href="https://www.gsmarena.com/alcatel_ot_max_db-27.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.gsmarena.com/alcatel_ot_max_db-27.php</a>
Unfortunate title. I would be much happier if the capslock didn't. I have never, ever wanted to use capslock, and on e.g. livecds it is a big nuisance to need to fix it (CapsLock -> Ctrl) on every boot-up.<p>I curse the person who put the by-far least useful function on one of the most accessible keys, and bunged Ctrl down where it is out of easy reach. A pox on them!
Amusingly in reference to the original discussion, see catb's glossary: <a href="http://catb.org/jargon/html/M/mojibake.html" rel="nofollow">http://catb.org/jargon/html/M/mojibake.html</a><p>On Safari this is mangled until I force the encoding to Western (ISO Latin 1) - Chrome and Firefox leave it as is.
> Computers now instantly boot up when plugged into the wall, and run until the plug is pulled. No more start-up time, the cases are aesthetically cleaner, and manufacturing cost is down at least a fraction of a dollar.<p>This is not futuristic, but actually retro. Some older computers (i.e. Sinclair ZX Spectrum) didn't have a power button at all.
I see some comments of remapping the caps lock into ctrl. Not much benefit IMO. I'd recommend to trying out backspace instead.<p>Why? It removes the need to move your right hand off the mouse if you need to delete anything.<p>For example: double click a word and backspace with left hand. Especially handy for programming. Definitely one i can't live without now.
People building custom keyboards do choose to remove some keys. Here are some examples:<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/sxaxe0/the_koibloom_40/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/sxaxe0...</a><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/sf5hot/dsa_ppw_is_cheating/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/sf5hot...</a><p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/sb5jf4/first_build_handwired_20_19231_with_cloud_lighting/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/sb5jf4...</a>
Something something slippery slope.<p>I mean look, if you believe in abstractions at all, then sometimes (or always) interfaces need to hide things. Interfaces can be made too small for sure, but without a more principled argument on <i>why</i> any particular change is going too far, it seems way too easy to say "oh no someone made an interface smaller, the end is nigh!"<p>Though to be fair I guess the author's point is maybe that the arguments in the bug report are also insufficient if they <i>could</i> also be used to remove critical components. I'm not sure how much I agree with that, but I only glanced at the actual bug report.
I realize this is a more nuanced take on metric analysis, but the title just makes me remember that before I remapped caps lock, my most frequent use of it was to turn it back off when it had been accidentally pressed.
If I could remove a key from a full keyboard, it would be Num lock. Why does it exist? I can't think of any situation where you have a full num pad and don't want to use it.
If you enjoyed reading this, you may also appreciate the novel Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. As letters are banned in the story, they also are omitted in subsequent chapters.
I usually surgically disable my CAPS lock in registry or firmware settings -- most annoying mis-click ever for me -- I just hold down shift if I need to
> <i>Computers now instantly boot up when plugged into the wall, and run until the plug is pulled.</i><p>So, like my beloved C64 then? I'm all for it.
Reminds me of ThinkPads old good seven row keyboard and the new six (DISASTER) row keyboard and a lot of changes from Apple with th Touchbar (++DISASTER).<p>Where is my context menu key? Why Fn+F4 doesn't suspend the machine anymore. Who regrouped the keys in this bad layout (Six Row Disaster). Somebody didn't understand the difference between clean design and useful design?
awesome article! I still remember switching back and forth from sun (and other unix) keyboards - ctrl and caps lock are reversed from today's standard 104.<p>I haven't used the caps-lock since then. Pinky just goes on the shift key TO TYPE ALL SHOUTY. I don't really know if pinky ever gets used fro letters in any case, but I think he doesn't so unless you need capital ctrl- something what's the problem?<p>Still it does also feel like the problem of designers that like to use the tail to wag the dog to justify yet another unnecessary change is just all too realistic.
I type on ErgoDox Infinity keyboards and I don't have a caps-lock. It was a bit irritating so I switched from Java to Go to avoid capitalized constants and I'm happy again!
I'm too lazy to deal with remapping it, so I typically pry the caps lock key off my keyboards. My kids always say that my keyboard is broken and try to fix it...
This reminds me of those AI's at Facebook? who did exactly this before they were plugged off. I've read about it right here on HN circa a year or so.
That's why one of the fundamental tenets of Open Source is "scratch your own itch". Good software gets built by people who actually use it.
I discovered that if you limit yourself to a-z and 1-6 you can put 6 letter usernames into an 32-bit integer with 2 bits to spare.<p>And that gives you 1 billion combinations, sure most of them are garbage but still.<p><a href="http://fuse.rupy.se" rel="nofollow">http://fuse.rupy.se</a> uses it to test it...
Obligatory "Chicken" strip from The Parking Lot is Full (PLIF), 1996-03-15 [0]<p>[0] <a href="http://j.aufbix.org/plif/archive/wc072.gif" rel="nofollow">http://j.aufbix.org/plif/archive/wc072.gif</a>