Have you met the United States Government? 
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This came out today.
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I realize this is an extremely specific use case but Canadian postal codes would be a nightmare to type out without caps lock functionality. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a key, but the functionality needs to be there.
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I never heard of Compose. What other keys can we get rid off? I’d like no more than five or six if possible.
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Caps lock is needed and very widely utilized for technical applications, forms, engineering, art, and texting communications.
Also, if you press the SPACEBAR twice, you get 2 spaces.
That is how it should be.
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ALL CHANGE IS WRONG
“Body seems unclear, is it a complete sentence?”
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The Compose key is a Linux thing, it let’s you “mash” two or more keys into one, especially handy for non-latin stuff, like Compose z . ⇒ ż, and typography: Compose--- ⇒ — (em-dash). Plus, it’s sequential not simultaneous, and also somewhat mnemonic (like, colons for umlauts).
BUT it sounds like you would like a chorded keyboard. See also this xkcd blog post for an on-topic alternative use of Caps Lock!
You might also go full unary, and use this one finger keyboard (PS/2 Adapter not included).
EDIT: had to download&upload the image, I hope Randall doesn’t mind. I think these are (trivially) generated through an X utility anyway)
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The NeXT Cube (circa 1989) had the perfect solution. Its keyboard has no Caps Lock key, but Caps Lock mode is enabled/disabled by hitting Command+Shift.
It’s impossible to enable Caps Lock by accident, and it doesn’t waste precious keyboard real estate on a key that most people don’t need.
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Having learned to computer-type in the seventies, I had to spend a long time learning to move my pinky down to hit the CTRL key when it migrated down from its rightful place where the CAPS LOCK key is now. I actually modified some Apple keyboards to swap those two keys back then. Note that I didn’t remove CAPS LOCK, just got it out of the way. I eventually trained my pinky to look for CTRL down low.
I find it interesting that there are people who assume that no one uses the CAPS LOCK key, just because they don’t. I use it often when entering schematic diagram signal names or C definition.
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yeah, I know that I can use Prt Scn to start the process, but I’m old enough to remember back when for may applications, you could press that one button and then hear that dot-matrix going without doing anything else.
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There are actually people in my company who would have to learn how to use the Shift key if Caps Lock were to ever go away.
To capitalize the first word of a sentence, they will actually hit Caps Lock, type a character, then hit it again to turn it off. I first noticed this when watching people enter capitals in passwords, seeing the “Caps Lock is on” message briefly pop up. I asked why they didn’t use the Shift key and they said it was too complicated.
Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V would likely be met with utter horror and outrage: “I’m not a computer person you know!!”
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IMPORTANT. By powering on this computer, you accept the NeXT software License found in the accompanying Here’s How booklet.
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As a true baby boomer, I changed some setting or other so that the shift key unlocks the caps lock. Thirty years of typing for a living and it never ceased to surprise me that the shift didn’t unlock the caps lock and I was happy to learn I could force it to do so like it did when I learned to type on a manual in 1963.
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Came here to see if anyone else was mentioning this. I work at a college help desk and the number of (especially young) people that do this blows my mind. I suppose this makes me sound like a crank, but I’m not really that much older than a lot of them. Since they’re usually typing passwords they can’t see, sometimes they think it’ll allow them to type a special character as well. Why is this a thing?
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Yes! I’ve seen so many people doing this! How does it make sense to anyone to do this?
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Used to be? Would this be before or after Eternal September?
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This is the right answer
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I was pretty much joking about the six keys thing, but yes, I would like one of those chorded keyboards just as a novelty.
I’m a video editor, and over the past 20 years I’ve created an entire shortcut system where all the relevant keys are mapped to the left side of the keyboard so the right hand never has to leave the mouse, which is kind of what the chorded keyboard thing is going for.
If anyone is interested in this system, let me know.
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