3 ms·

Why would not they remap F1 to something else, say another F2 if they so like it? The functionality has been at both Linux and Windows for a very long time.

by ptero 9y ago

bru 9y ago
Because popping the key is by far the simplest solution, especially if you won't miss it in any of your usual workflows. AFAIK remapping it will need Autohotkey or similar, and banks & funds aren't the environment the more welcoming to arbitrary binaries, even if free software.
GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
They are users, users too often think in terms of optimizing what they do, not the tools they use, or learning to optimize things they think are underlying and fixed.
DavidWoof 9y ago
AFAIK, Windows has never had a built-in way to remap keys. Sure, you can download third-party tools to do it, but that's often a dicey move in a corporate environment where you aren't allowed to install third-party software. I'm really surprised more keyboards can't do this kind of simple remapping themselves. I used to remap the keys on virtually every machine I worked on, but these days I just bring in my CODE keyboard which does some simple remapping itself (e.g., caps lock -> ctrl).
jerf 9y ago
In addition to what other people mention, it's generally a bad idea to take a sloppy input and try to autocorrect it, because it encourage bad habits that will really surprise you the next time the autocorrect doesn't work as you expect. This ranges from autocorrecting spelling, to keypresses, to UNIX commands, to all sorts of things. It's better to block or highlight (if relevant) the bad input than to try to correct it automatically. For one thing, if you encourage sloppy input, the brain automatically adjusts and will become even more sloppy; while this isn't necessarily a never-ending spiral it is still quite likely to lead somewhere worse than blocking bad input entirely. (Incidentally, if you want to fiddle with your keyboard but you don't want to go whole-hog with switching to an entirely different layout, you can use this principle to switch around two keys really quickly. If you want to try your Caps Lock as, say, CTRL, that's fine, but be sure to unmap the CTRL key itself. If you don't, it'll just be frustrating as you try to force yourself to remember, and realize three weeks later that Caps Lock is still mapped to CTRL but you haven't used it at all. If you do unmap the old key entirely, you'll find you've adjusted entirely in as little as 5 minutes, and it's only another 5 minutes to go back, if that's what you decide. You can iterate on these things much more easily than you might think.)

Why would not they remap F1 to something else, say another F2 if they so like it? The functionality has been at both Linux and Windows for a very long time.

by ptero 9y ago

Why would not they remap F1 to something else, say another F2 if they so like it? The functionality has been at both Linux and Windows for a very long time.

bru 9y ago

Because popping the key is by far the simplest solution, especially if you won't miss it in any of your usual workflows. AFAIK remapping it will need Autohotkey or similar, and banks & funds aren't the environment the more welcoming to arbitrary binaries, even if free software.

GCU-Empiricist 9y ago

They are users, users too often think in terms of optimizing what they do, not the tools they use, or learning to optimize things they think are underlying and fixed.

DavidWoof 9y ago

AFAIK, Windows has never had a built-in way to remap keys. Sure, you can download third-party tools to do it, but that's often a dicey move in a corporate environment where you aren't allowed to install third-party software. I'm really surprised more keyboards can't do this kind of simple remapping themselves. I used to remap the keys on virtually every machine I worked on, but these days I just bring in my CODE keyboard which does some simple remapping itself (e.g., caps lock -> ctrl).

jerf 9y ago

In addition to what other people mention, it's generally a bad idea to take a sloppy input and try to autocorrect it, because it encourage bad habits that will really surprise you the next time the autocorrect doesn't work as you expect. This ranges from autocorrecting spelling, to keypresses, to UNIX commands, to all sorts of things. It's better to block or highlight (if relevant) the bad input than to try to correct it automatically. For one thing, if you encourage sloppy input, the brain automatically adjusts and will become even more sloppy; while this isn't necessarily a never-ending spiral it is still quite likely to lead somewhere worse than blocking bad input entirely. (Incidentally, if you want to fiddle with your keyboard but you don't want to go whole-hog with switching to an entirely different layout, you can use this principle to switch around two keys really quickly. If you want to try your Caps Lock as, say, CTRL, that's fine, but be sure to unmap the CTRL key itself. If you don't, it'll just be frustrating as you try to force yourself to remember, and realize three weeks later that Caps Lock is still mapped to CTRL but you haven't used it at all. If you do unmap the old key entirely, you'll find you've adjusted entirely in as little as 5 minutes, and it's only another 5 minutes to go back, if that's what you decide. You can iterate on these things much more easily than you might think.)