Nonsense!<p>The average person uses CAPS LOCK a lot more than those function keys at the top, or the scroll lock or pause/break key or the insert key.<p>I use it when typing addresses for shipping labels or sometimes the column names for excel spreadsheets or serial keys or case sensetive captchas. I know it's not much but it's still a lot more than the function keys, pause/break, insert, or scroll lock.<p>I've never in my life used F1-F3 and F5-F11. (alt+F4 closes windows and F12 is for full screen, those I use).<p>Perhaps Capslock and Backspace should be switched?
Of course it does. Any draftsman worth his salt will tell you that many standards dictate all drawing text to be in caps - in fact, I cannot think of any proper design drawing that does not use full caps. Even drafting calligraphy used on hand drawn design drawings uses a very specific writing style that is all-caps.<p>Why would you permanently hold down shift for that? You have to type:<p>- general notes<p>- welding notes<p>- the bill of materials<p>- title block text, names, etc.<p>- dimension / tolerance info<p>- much more<p>all in capitals. There's simply no reason not to use caps lock.<p>On this point, it's also useful to note that the shift key allows the user to shift capslock off temporarily. This is the use case of all draftsmen I know, as the only time lowercase is used on drawings is for some dimensions (eg: the unit for millimetres is 'mm' in lower case).
So that functionality as part of capslock is necessary too.
On Linux it's possible to simultaneously map caps lock to both escape and control with xcape [1]. On short presses without any other keys depressed, escape is fired. On press-and-hold with other keys, control is fired. This is great for vim, emacs, and any other application with control shortcuts.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/alols/xcape" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alols/xcape</a>
Ummm... I don't get it. What is wrong with caps lock?<p>What if I want to type, let's say, some longer name of a constant that are usually IN_ALL_CAPS_AND_WRITTEN_LIKE_THIS?<p>I don't want to hold shift on all these letters. I LIKE CAPS LOCK AND I LIKE IT A LOT.
> I can’t think of a single time when I’ve ever wanted to use it<p>That's because you know how to type. Watch your parents or someone that doesn't type often use a keyboard, you'll notice they only ever use one finger at a time; you can't use one finger at a time with SHIFT. Caps lock doesn't make sense for someone that can type well but makes perfect sense for people that can't. oh and also people with one hand.
My personal remap of caps lock is backspace. The usual one, which I hit a lot (y'know, we type, we make mistakes), cranks my wrist, whereas the capslock key, which lives on the home row, is zero stress.
For normal people that I observe, caps lock is used a lot. I get asked quite a lot where the "caps lock" is on the iPad on screen keyboard[1].<p>I could agree with the post if it was qualified for modern developers (RPGers would disagree).<p>1) push left and right shift at the same time
In OSX, instead of setting caps lock to "no action", I set it to be another control key. I have never been able to hit the pathetic little excuse for a control key on Mac keyboards without also tapping fn or option.
Unlike most keyboards which have the ctrl key on the bottom left corner, MacBook Pro keyboards for some reason have the useless fn button at that location, and the ctrl key to the right of that. This makes text navigation with the emacs keybindings (eg, "ctrl+n" and "ctrl+p") even more awkward than it usually is, given that touch typing requires you to stay close to home row.<p>The solution to both this problem and the uselessness of the caps lock key is just to set the caps lock key to act as ctrl.<p><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/a/162907" rel="nofollow">http://stackoverflow.com/a/162907</a>
#include <def.h>
and many C defs and libraries(notably Gtk+ with so many constants), macros, and constants... This applies to C++ and Java as well.<p>I rest my case, from a C programmer.
As an engineer, there are a lot of technical documents and drawings that often require 100% caps. I wouldn't be able to do my job without Caps.<p>There are also a variety of applications and situations that I have used it, as simply a home user as well.<p>Not including being spammy or 'shouting' it
Once you get past the 'Someone is yelling' in all CAPS. Most of the time ALL CAPITALS IS EASIER to read for many people. It prints more legible.
People using Windows (I don't know about Linux) think that Caps lock is Shift lock. Wrong. It's <i>Caps</i> lock. And that's pretty useful.<p>On OSX French keyboard, Shift-é would give 2, Caps-lock+é gives É. That key gives straight and easy access to uppercase diacriticals: é-É, è-È, à-À, etc. And when "UNTEL ACCUSE" means "some guy accuses", "UNTEL ACCUSÉ" means "some guy accused". It's pretty important.
I have to say, replacing the caps lock with a "search" (super) key is one of the best design decisions on my chromebook. It automatically brings up my Gnome3 app menu/search, which I used to have Gnome-Do for.<p>Needless to say, the "search" key is the first one pressed every time I boot up.
I have my Caps Lock mapped to Control on OS X (10.6.8). Since the last update, the mapping disappears randomly. I googled and there're other people with the same problem, but no solution yet.<p>Figured I'd ask here if anyone found out how to fix it.
What would be an alternative to the caps lock key? When I type final and/or static variables that are more than a few characters I don't want to be holding shift the whole time like a neanderthal.
This person has obviously never programmed a day in his life.
Caps lock is very useful for typing uppercase CONSTANTS.<p>This is not relevant for hacker news.