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This question is, as indicated, for those who use Emacs.

When you do, do you rebind the caps-lock key to CTRL, or do you use the "normal" ctrl key?

I've recently learned some Emacs commands and was using the Visual Studio 2008 emacs commands for a while, and of course I used a caps-rebind tool, but I'm curious how many other people do.

On a side note, the emacs bindings for VS are severely incomplete :(

Luke Girvin
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Wayne Werner
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    Kind of a closed question, are there any other answers than, "yes" "no" and perhaps "sometimes"? – Trey Jackson Jun 08 '10 at 17:31
  • I wonder how hard it would be to make a hardware interface - just something to plug your keyboard into - that captures any caps-lock stroke and remaps to control. – Wayne Werner Jun 08 '10 at 18:15
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    yes. caps lock to ctrl is awesome. and has saved my hands many cramps. i do it at the system level so it works for everything, opening a new tab in my browser (caps + T)... yay! – Mica Jun 08 '10 at 19:06
  • Wow... I've had my caps key rebound for a while but I'm so used to pushing the "other" control that I completely forgot that one exists. Also, ctrl + backspace when typing in a "normal" window! I have been enlightened... – Wayne Werner Jun 09 '10 at 13:50

9 Answers9

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I have no use for Caps Lock under any circumstances, whether I'm using Emacs or any other program. In the rare case that I need to type several capital letters at once, I can easily hold down Shift with my left pinkie and type almost as fast as normal with my remaining fingers. If I ever needed to produce a large amount of all-caps text using Emacs, I'd just type it all in lower case, select it, and upcase it all at once with C-x C-u, aka upcase-region.

So yes, I do make Caps Lock an additional Control key. I don't just swap them, I eliminate Caps Lock entirely.

Sean
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I'm not an emacs user, but I use Unix heavily with programs such as screen (and, cough, vim) which use control a lot, and I bind my caps lock to control. Caps lock is a useless key that should have never made the typewriter->computer transition.

Ether
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  • I think a lot of vim users rebind caps lock to escape! It doesn't need control a whole lot like emacs does. – Cascabel Jun 09 '10 at 15:15
  • @Jefromi: I hit `^V` and `^W` all day long in vim... – Ether Jun 09 '10 at 16:38
  • Sure, there are a few things, but emacs needs meta or control for basically everything, yeah? While Vim tends to need a lot of mode toggling. – Cascabel Jun 09 '10 at 18:18
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Yes I do remap CAPSLOCK to control.

Trey Jackson
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  • can you do that in a Mac? Sorry, I am a newbie and I read elsewhere you can't do that in a Mac unless you do that for the whole computer (which I don't want to do). I don't even know whether you use a mac (and I would guess not - you use linux?) but decided to try anyway.... – Vivi Jun 08 '10 at 17:31
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I kept one of my old Sun keyboards with control where God intended it until it would not work with the new UltraSparcs. Ever since I have always remapped them, even if it did result in some odd blinking light behavior on some machines.

Ukko
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  • +1 for the "God intended" - if He had meant for us to use caps that frequently, uppercase would be the default and we'd use shift to lower-case things! (Also I wonder if ALL CAPS would be as prevalent on the intartubes if the caps-lock was where it belongs...) – Wayne Werner Jun 10 '10 at 12:31
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Absolutely yes, and I'm really happy with it. Caps Lock is simply unuseful and irritating, switching it to a Ctrl will:

  • Save you from awkward positions
  • Save you from accidentally activating Caps Lock
pygabriel
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I also have useless MSWindows on my keyboard, so now I have three Ctrl keys on the left-hand side: Caps Lock, Ctrl, and LWin.

RWin generates "menu", which runs execute-extended-command (just like M-x). I'd never even tried pressing it until last week, so I don't know how long that's been the case for, but I'm trying to get accustomed to it.

I'm also trying to get used to using the right-hand Ctrl key when the keys to be modified are on the left side of the keyboard, and not in immediate range of (one of) the left Ctrl keys.

phils
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I do, both on windows and linux.

offby1
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A show of hands? I have been using Emacs on and off over the past 5 years or more. Never bothered about the caps lock key. I do not bind it to control key. C-x C-u did the work every time. I can't recall any instance of having hit the caps lock when i was reaching out to 'a' or tab or 'shift'.

My be it it time for me to change the key binding. I get pain in the hands while typing. I'm going to try and see if having caps lock as control helps.

vpit3833
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I found that using 'alt' as 'ctrl' and 'win' as 'alt' is better than the well known 'capslock' method.

Google 'lisp keyboard' you'll get a better idea what I'm suggesting and why Emacs has so many 'ctrl' combinations in the first place -- at the time it's invented the keyboard layouts doesn't look like what it is today.

After failed multiple times trying to use 'capslock' as 'ctrl', now I love the 'alt' way.

Roger Wang
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  • Ahh... yeah, the caps-lock where it belongs - underneath the shift key on a nice tiny key - just like my typewriter. – Wayne Werner Jun 09 '10 at 14:33