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The Joys of Unix Keyboards

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Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#51

Post by ygra »

jandrese wrote: post #50
ygra wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen quite a few people that, either or of habit or due to it being less error-prone to type for them, use Caps Lock for typing capital letters. Instead of Shift+letter, they'd type Caps, letter, Caps. One keystroke more, but no two keys held at the same time, which is difficult for some people. I'm sure there are superior accessibility options, but those have to be found first, whereas Caps Lock just works the…

Isn't that what StickyKeys is for?

Yes, as noted, there are accessibility options for that, but that's possibly not an option, depending on how locked-down the PC is the people are working on (one person I've seen this doing was at the ticket counter in a train station; I'm not even sure whether they still had their DOS-based system back then). People tend to use an option they know over one that may be objectively better that they don't know ;-)

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#52

Post by falcolas »

rb808 wrote: post #31

Does anyone ever use Caps Lock? It seems like such a waste of space.

IIRC, super fast typists will use it, since it’s a complete key cycle and not a chord. Apparently at those speeds, a key press is easier to properly execute than a chord.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#53

Post by btschaegg »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #36

> I can't imagine why anyone thought Caps Lock should have had this prominent of placement. Caps Lock was originally Shift Lock on typewriters, and was adjacent to the Shift key because it was literally a mechanical locking device to hold the Shift key down.

Although you're absolutely right, I still think there's actual merit in the way of thinking of the sentence you're quoting.

Very much about keyboards today is derived from strange quirks that were part of typewriters for very good reasons, but have never been properly reevaluated once they were converted to electronical keyboards. Of course, the main goal likely has been to minimize friction for those users that were already used to typing on a typewriter.

Nonetheless, having switched to an Ergodox EZ about a year ago, I get more and more frustrated by standard keyboards and I'm wondering why ortholinear keyboards are not the default by now. Similarly, I find it very strange that a digital interface like USB HID doesn't allow the keyboard to specify unicode codepoints instead of key codes that then still have to be interpreted by the OS.

That is, of course I understand how we ended up where we are, but I'm constantly amazed by how conservative IT can be in some respects while changing on a dime in others.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#54

Post by JdeBP »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #36

> I can't imagine why anyone thought Caps Lock should have had this prominent of placement. Caps Lock was originally Shift Lock on typewriters, and was adjacent to the Shift key because it was literally a mechanical locking device to hold the Shift key down.

The headlined article talks about "the Caps Lock key's usual position". What it is overlooking is that to a fair number of people the position of Caps Lock on an IBM Model M keyboard was, conversely, the Control key's usual position, because that's where it was on the Model F for the XT, and where it was on quite a number of home computer keyboards in the 1970s and 1980s.

Fun fact: Some home computers had both caps lock and shift lock.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#55

Post by klez »

rb808 wrote: post #31

Does anyone ever use Caps Lock? It seems like such a waste of space.

I do. If I need to type a full word, all uppercase (e.g. the name of a constant) or simply more than one uppercase letter I'll use caps lock, because it allows me to keep touch typing without having to change the hand that keeps shift pressed. I never understood why people seem to be against caps lock, to be fair.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#56

Post by klez »

jandrese wrote: post #50
ygra wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen quite a few people that, either or of habit or due to it being less error-prone to type for them, use Caps Lock for typing capital letters. Instead of Shift+letter, they'd type Caps, letter, Caps. One keystroke more, but no two keys held at the same time, which is difficult for some people. I'm sure there are superior accessibility options, but those have to be found first, whereas Caps Lock just works the…

Isn't that what StickyKeys is for?

But why should I use a non-default setting when I have a key right there on the keyboard for that very purpose?

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#57

Post by JdeBP »

btschaegg wrote: post #53
i_am_proteus wrote: post #36

> I can't imagine why anyone thought Caps Lock should have had this prominent of placement. Caps Lock was originally Shift Lock on typewriters, and was adjacent to the Shift key because it was literally a mechanical locking device to hold the Shift key down.

Although you're absolutely right, I still think there's actual merit in the way of thinking of the sentence you're quoting. Very much about keyboards today is derived from strange quirks that were part of typewriters for very good reasons, but have never been properly reevaluated once they were converted to electronical keyboards. Of course, the main goal likely has been to minimize friction for those users that were…

There's a deep and complex answer to your point about Unicode code points, which is an interesting question to consider in light of the 1980s shift away from a terminal I/O paradigm.

The shallow response is the simple question: What are the Unicode code points for End, Calculator, F7, and Paste? These all have USB HID usages. (-:

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#58

Post by btschaegg »

JdeBP wrote: post #57
btschaegg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although you're absolutely right, I still think there's actual merit in the way of thinking of the sentence you're quoting. Very much about keyboards today is derived from strange quirks that were part of typewriters for very good reasons, but have never been properly reevaluated once they were converted to electronical keyboards. Of course, the main goal likely has been to minimize friction for those users that were…

There's a deep and complex answer to your point about Unicode code points, which is an interesting question to consider in light of the 1980s shift away from a terminal I/O paradigm. The shallow response is the simple question: What are the Unicode code points for End, Calculator, F7, and Paste? These all have USB HID usages. (-:

> What are the Unicode code points for End, Calculator, F7, and Paste?

True; OTOH, there already are control characters such as `BS`, `DEL`, `BEL` and so on that also don't make all too much sense if you look at unicode just as a collection of glyphs. So, I personally would still maintain that allocating a couple of blocks for stuff like this wouldn't hurt that much.

Also, no one said that the HID specs could not describe a superset of unicode (e.g. transmit letters with a unicode prefix and control signals normally (or something similar)). It's just that the way things are now is about the worst case in a lot of ways.

But: As things work good enough, they likely won't change for a long time, so going on about it certainly is futile, too ;-)

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#59

Post by dfinninger »

davefp wrote: post #32
mdszy wrote: post #22

Every keyboard I've ever used I've remapped the caps lock to control, whether in hardware (like on my pok3r) or in software (on my work computer). I have a hard time ever using a keyboard without this remapping done.

Capslock is an Escape key for me because I use Vim a lot. I've heard lots of tmux users map it to Control and then configure tmux to use Ctrl+a as the activation mapping, which sounds very useful too.

I have “fd” set to return me to normal mode. I picked this up from Spacemacs, and I actually like it a lot. I even set it up in IntelliJ.

Now my capslock is Ctrl. I find that combo to be particularly effective for me.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#60

Post by silasdb »

majewsky wrote: post #15
dijit wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many ways to rebind caps lock to be escape on press and control when used in combination with another key. Karbiner elements on macos and xcape on Linux come to mind immediately. But some keyboard firmwares are programmable enough to do it themselves too. However. What I found best as a vim user was to use ^[ as escape. It has the added bonus of actually being faster to process by vim too.

You don't need any extra software to map Caps to Esc on X11: Just enable the caps:escape option. In context: https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/6c4478...

You can also use xmodmap [1].

My xmodmap file has things like:

  ! Make Caps Lock be Escape and Scroll Lock be Caps Lock
  remove Lock = Caps_Lock
  keysym Caps_Lock = Escape
  remove Lock = Scroll_Lock
  keysym Scroll_Lock = Caps_Lock
  add Lock = Caps_Lock
After reading this post, I also reverted backspace and bar/backslash:

  keysym BackSpace = backslash bar
  keysym backslash = BackSpace
[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xmodmap

EDIT: xmodmap link

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