10 ms·
Use caps lock as a language switch
- tyleo 10y agoI am a Vim user. Mapping Caps Lock to Esc has been pretty valuable and it only took me about a week to get used to the change.
- elg0nz 10y agoHave you tried the jk chord? for me, it feels faster because the j key is where my right index finger parks. :inoremap jk <esc> http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/chapters/10.html http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/chapters/10.ht...
- WildUtah 10y agoI love the jk chord. No more escape reach for me and vi gets even more vi-nature as the fingers stay where they belong. I even remap ESC to nop so that I won't ever forget.
- Dylan16807 10y agoOh, you mean hitting j and k in sequence, not an actual chord. Is there a way to make it trigger when pressing both keys at the same time? I'd rather not have a letter sequence that can kick me out of insert mode, especially when I'm pasting into my terminal.
- Zathrus1 10y agoNo; there's absolutely no way for vim (terminal vim at least, but gvim inherits lots of terminal quirks) to see a chord like that. But, never fear -- if you paste while in paste mode (:h 'paste or :h 'pastetoggle) imaps, iabbrs, etc. do not get activated. If you paste when not in paste mode then things tend to get messed up anyway and those are probably the least of your worries. Or paste using the clipboard -- "+p in normal mode, or <c-r>+ in insert mode. (The other clipboard is in the asterisk register, but HN keeps eating the character)
- favadi 10y agoI think you can use Ctrl+C or Ctrl+[ instead of Esc?
- MrRadar 10y agoAm I the only one who actually uses caps-lock for its intended purpose on a regular basis? I use it pretty much any time I have to type more than two capital letters in a row, which is frequently when I'm programming.
- gunnihinn 10y agoNOT TO MENTION ALL THE SHOUTING ONE DOES IN COMMENT SECTIONS
- marinintim 10y agoDo you program in SQL? (I've just pressed Shift and released it after I typed SQL, hey) Using Caps Lock for its intended purpose means that it's another mode that you need mental resources to keep track of. Historical aside that's not related to your comment: early Soviet computers modeled after IBM PC had Latin key, that basically worked like Shift, but it changed layout from Cyrillic to Latin and vice versa. This idea died after MS Windows, that didn't (and still doesn't? I don't know) have this option, took over the market.
- sbuttgereit 10y agoI write quite a lot of SQL and PL/SQL. Yes, I use Caps Lock as intended.
- 10y ago
- hs86 10y agoI mapped caps lock to ctrl on Windows and to command on MacOS. Using the system wide default shortcuts feels much easier this way, because caps lock is on the same middle row where my fingers usually rest. I got this idea from the custom layout of the HHKB keyboard: https://elitekeyboards.com/proddata/doc/hhkbp2_basic_layout1500.png https://elitekeyboards.com/proddata/doc/hhkbp2_basic_layout1...
- _lce0 10y agoThis is a great tip for chromebooks users, as these machine dont have such key!
- trevyn 10y agoI used caps lock as backspace for a long time, I quite enjoyed it.
- rhinoceraptor 10y agoI don't even have a caps lock key programmed on my ErgoDox keyboard.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoThis is problematic for Emacs users: You can't put Switch Lang there, you need Control there! However, you could bind this to lcontrol, and get the capslock light to turn on when it goes. Also, am I the only one who at some point rebound ralt to rshift? I've stopped doing it now. I don't know what I was thinking.
- marinintim 10y agoLanguage switch is problematic for Emacs users in general, 'cause it messes with bindings. So when I do emacs I use mule, which is mapped by default as C-/. It is not so bad if you remap Caps to Control, but still not one key.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoWell, the idea is that you're using emacs for your code, and then you jump over to your mail client (all the emacs mail clients don't really work for me), and hit a key to switch over to russian, or whatever.
- ramblenode 10y agoI love Caps Lock. It's just a free key on the home row to reprogram to whatever you want. I change mine to ESC for easier Vim interaction.
- grahamburger 10y agoI mapped caps lock to left click and then used eviacam to control the mouse pointer with my face. No more keyboard<->mouse back and forth. Works great!
- DigitalJack 10y agoOn windows, I have capslock mapped thusly: If pressed and released without another keypress in between, it sends ESC. If pressed in combination with another key, it's CTRL. I haven't found a way to do this dual mapping on OSX, so it's just CTRL there. I use AutoHotKey for this on windows.
- rjgray 10y agoI don't have my Mac in front of me, but you can do this using Seil[1] and Karabiner[2]. From recollection, you disable caps-link in OS X settings, use Seil to map caps-lock to control, and then use Karabiner to map tapped-ctrl to escape. Sounds a bit hackish, but it works very well. You can also do the same thing on Linux using xcape[3] [1]: https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/seil.html.en https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/seil.html.en [2]: https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/index.html.en https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/index.html.en [3]: https://github.com/alols/xcape https://github.com/alols/xcape
- dogma1138 10y agoUnder windows you don't need to use 3d party apps. Regedit HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Input Method\Hot Keys\Your_Language_IME Set the key modifier to 00 and set the virtual key to the key you want caps lock is 04 iirc. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd375731(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd3... I think there was also a way to hack it through HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout\Toggle but I'm not sure if it's used anymore.
- heinrich5991 10y agoThe caps key is clearly destined for the compose key, quite useful if you sometimes need to type different languages. "şçäë"
- hprotagonist 10y agoCAPS_LOCK -> L_CONTROL. Long-time emacs use has permanently changed my left pinkie.
- sssilver 10y agoAs an "academic" touch typer, I use Caps Lock as intended (for typing more than 2 all-caps letters in a row), however since I need that much less frequently than Ctrl, I swap Ctrl and Caps Lock on every computer that I call home. As far as switching between 3 keyboard layouts (dvp, Armenian, Russian), I map that to Option+Command+Space, but now that I think about it there's probably a better combination to be found.
- pdkl95 10y agoCaps_Lock should be mapped to Control_L so you can type it in the home row with less stress to the hand/fingers. (no twisting) Additionally, one of the better changes I made years ago was mapping redundant/useless modifiers to the bucky bits[1] in my ~/.Xmodmap. Phys Key | New Modifier Mapping ----------------------------------- CapsLock | Control Alt_L | Meta Alt_R | Alt (mod4) Win_L | Super (mod3) Win_R | Hyper (mod5) To my surprise, quite a few programs support the higher modifier bits. [1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/bucky-bits.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/bucky-bits.html
- AnonymousPlanet 10y agoOr you could use the edge of your left palm to hit CTRL. This reduces strain and is much faster. It's the way I could use Emacs to write my thesis and only wonder about those stories of RSI. On Mac and Linux, I have CTRL-Number set to switch workspaces.
- smilekzs 10y agoI've been doing this for a while. I agree it's the most natural map for a multi-lingual ({en-US, zh-CN, ja-JP} here). AutoHotkey on Windows 10: CapsLock::#Space +CapsLock::+#Space
- Kenji 10y agoSpeaking of multilinguals - note that Swiss people actually need capslock to type things like 'Ö' because if you press SHIFT + 'ö' then you get 'é' on a Swiss layout (well, I guess you could type '¨' first and then 'O', that also assembles to 'Ö'). Gotta accomodate for both German and French. Just a bit of trivia you might not have known.
- mxfh 10y agoTry the US-International Layout on US-QWERTY. It works well with German and French as secondary languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#US-International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#US-International The Windows version makes more sense to me, but I'm getting used to the Mac one too.
- ucs 10y agoIndeed. On my bog standard US+International layout I can simply do: AltGr + e = é AltGr + p = ö Adding Shift to the mix produces É and Ö, respectively, as one would expect.
- deathanatos 10y agoSome OSes (I know at least Linux does) support what's called "two-shift caps lock": if you hit both shifts, together, you get caps-locks. If you hit only one (on either side), you get a normal shift key. This frees up the CapsLock-the-key for whatever you want, and you get to keep CapsLock-the-function. (And, you don't have to "move" it, such as in the "Swap CapsLock and Control" schemes: you get to have normal Control, CapsLock key for whatever you want, and the capslock functionality.) I mapped my CapsLock key to "Level3 shift" at home, and mapped various interesting characters into the homerow, and space. I figured "_" is a word separator, and space bar is for separating words, so Level3+Space = "_". Level3 + the home row is stuff like ()[]{}; things that are normally way out. Not sure how good the layout is, since I'm still trying to get used to it, and old habits die really hard. I was heavily inspired by the Neo keyboard layout[1]. [1]: http://neo-layout.org/index_en.html http://neo-layout.org/index_en.html
- henriquemaia 10y agoThanks for your reply. After reading it, I went out searching on how to enable "two-shift caps lock", because I sometimes need the caps lock (in Brazil almost all government related documents demand caps for items such as your name, etc.), but I also need a good compose key. I've been long using the caps lock key as the compose key, but the lack of an alternative caps lock did annoy me at times. Thanks to you, now I have the solution that perfectly fits my personal needs!
- ucs 10y agoI use Caps Lock as an extra general-purpose function key (F20), which I can then bind as I please depending on the application. Mapping it as an extra modifier seems a tad unergonomic. Ideally, each modifier key should be located on either side of the keyboard, so that you can always engage it with the opposite hand. To that end, I also remap the Menu key on my MS Natural Keyboard[1] to act as a second Super modifier. Furthermore, since I'm multilingual and need an AltGr modifier on both sides as well, I map the combo Ctrl+Super to act as AltGr. See my US+International XKB keymap[2] should you happen to want a similar setup on Linux. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-us/products/keyboards/natural-ergonomic-keyboard-4000/b2m-00012 https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-us/products/keyboar... [2] https://gist.github.com/ucs1/fe673a3606442911dbd7d016a3726465 https://gist.github.com/ucs1/fe673a3606442911dbd7d016a372646...
- lowmagnet 10y agoI hold caps lock for ctrl, and tap it for escape. Right then left shift is my caps lock, tap shift to unlock.
- franciscop 10y agoWell this is just magic. I had set it up to Ctrl+Space since I speak Spanish, English and learning Japanese. I am not fluent enough in Japanese yet, but it becomes a burden when trying to write a website in Spanish. You can just do this instead in Ubuntu: Text Entry Settings => click on "Switch to the next source using" => Caps Lock
- neurocroc 10y agoI actually think you can take it a step further. I have my caps lock mapped to esc on single press and as opt + control when held but I also use something I call sticky keys that allow me to keep my hands on the keyboard and on the home row at all times. [Here it is and how I use it.](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/dotfiles/tree/master/karabiner https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/dotfiles/tree/master/karab...)