views:

367

answers:

9

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 :(

+1  A: 

Yes I do remap CAPSLOCK to control.

Trey Jackson
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
+5  A: 

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
+2  A: 

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
I think a lot of vim users rebind caps lock to escape! It doesn't need control a whole lot like emacs does.
Jefromi
@Jefromi: I hit `^V` and `^W` all day long in vim...
Ether
@Ether: 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.
Jefromi
A: 

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
A: 

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
A: 

I do, both on windows and linux.

offby1
A: 

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
A: 

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.

pc1500
Ahh... yeah, the caps-lock where it belongs - underneath the shift key on a nice tiny key - just like my typewriter.
Wayne Werner
+1  A: 

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
+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