The Joys of Unix Keyboards • Hacker News Board

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#81

Post by geerlingguy » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

RandallBrown wrote: post #72

klez wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've never had a problem touch typing while my pinky is holding down the shift key. I type kinda weird though. I don't use the right shift key at all. Only the left one.

I do that too, though overall typing speed is a little slower. It seems like it could be easy enough to do some sort of 'double-tap shift to go into caps lock' mode like the iOS default keyboard does.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#82

Post by ljm » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

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.

Can’t remember the last time I saw a keyboard with that, plus num lock and scroll lock. Turning your number pad on the side into a directional pad with scroll keys was quite interesting.

Not to mention the insert key without a state indicator, which these days would confuse the hell out of anyone who hits the key accidentally and didn’t understand why they were typing over everything.

There’s an incredible amount of computer history covering such small details. I love looking back and seeing how things have changed, besides the obvious things like storage media.

In fact, I bought parts for a new rig the other day and it blew my mind when the SSD I bought was a single chip I slotted in. It’s 500gig but the size changes your perception of it. The last time I did this I was hooking 2.5” SSDs through SATA and using a 3.5” HDD secondary with those crazy SCSI cables. Now it just slots in like a RAM chip.

PC building UX has changed a lot.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#83

Post by klez » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

RandallBrown wrote: post #72

klez wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've never had a problem touch typing while my pinky is holding down the shift key. I type kinda weird though. I don't use the right shift key at all. Only the left one.

Ok, but then you have to type an A with your left ring finger instead of using your pinky. Doesn't it slow you down? I'm asking because I never got in that habit and religiously kept using the finger "assigned" to each key.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#84

Post by iamsomewalrus » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

mileycyrusXOXO wrote: post #78

davefp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 set my keyboard to tap Capslock for ESC or hold for CTRL. Seems like the best of both worlds.

as always, Miley Cyrus is right.

I use this mapping in my current setup and find it really useful.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#85

Post by smsx » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

npo9 wrote: post #68

dfinninger wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I use to use “jk” for this. I stopped because several vim emulators, evil specifically, did not support this.

Evil does support this, I use it every day. (Or rather, evil-escape is a plug-in I use that makes this setup very simple)

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#86

Post by boomskats » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 9:53 PM UTC

Somewhat related - I _love_ the fact that MacOS still maps Ctrl-H to backspace.

I recently started instinctively using it as a backspace when typing (finally, thanks to a combination of laziness and vim). I'm finding it extremely comfortable (alongside xcape). Highly recommend trying it, especially if you're a Mac user.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#87

Post by Koshkin » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

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…

> I get more and more frustrated

Was it worth the suffering?

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#88

Post by decebalus1 » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

Keyboard bike-shedding is of a very special flavor. Seriously, I've been programming/typing for decades and I went through numerous layouts due to the specific hardware preferences of my employer, while keeping my personal hardware Apple. I just switched and adapted reasonably fast to do my job. I type very fast. I mean fast enough that an increase in speed will have a negligible increase in my productivity.

I never had nowhere near the amount of annoyance or desire to over-optimize a particular layout for a particular type of job. The only thing which comes close is the disappearance of the escape key on macbooks, but with the haptic feedback daemon I went over that one.

Do most people find value in this? I get that we're craftspeople and the keyboard is one of the most important tools yadda yadda input bla bla rubber meet the road. But do we actually get that much value to warrant so much interest?

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#89

Post by the_gastropod » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 10:16 PM UTC

It really is amazing how many no-longer-relevant problems our standard keyboards solve. Staggered keys, the qwerty layout, and the caps lock location, for example, are all absolutely worse for contemporary computer-use. But the momentum of these things is difficult to overcome. It's wild seeing touch screen keyboards mimic these same typewriter-centric design decisions.

Re: The Joys of Unix Keyboards

#90

Post by Koshkin » Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

Asooka wrote: post #44

consp wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also as a vim user I would like the esc instead of the control here but that is non Unix standard as far as I know. I also use Windows quite a lot so having the \ somewhere close is nice to have. Though I really dislike the meta key next to the space-bar but that is just me not being old enough to have used non IBM compatible keyboards. As you might have noticed, everybody's preference is different.

You can also use ^[ as escape, which on this keyboard is a very small motion away from the home row.

With Shift mapped to Escape, sure.