Hacker News Reader

Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

Funny, I just had a version of this happen to me this morning on iPad OS using a folio keyboard.

I had just upgraded to iPadOS 15 and the caps-lock-as-control setting reverted to the default. I went into settings and changed it back, but I did so with caps lock accidentially enabled.

This left the folio keyboard stuck in caps lock. I had to go back into settings, set caps lock back to caps lock, press the caps lock key to disable, then I could make it a control key. But trickily, the setting change didn't seem to take effect until I swiped out of the screen where you change that setting.

ANYWAY, I'M JUST GLAD I FIGURED IT OUT.

BTW, why does caps lock even still exist?

View on HN

> BTW, why does caps lock even still exist?

Dunno, but in my country we use a QWERTZ layout where you can't write the letters Ě, Š, Č, Ř, Ž, Ý Á, Í, É without caps lock, because with Shift those keys produce 2, 3, 4, ..., 0

So that's why I need it. :)

Alternatively you can do ˇ + E etc...

Isn't this why Alt+Gr exist? I use US-International and you can do Alt+Gr + Shift for a different set of characters.

> BTW, why does caps lock even still exist?

It was useful on some old machines that tended to prefer uppercase input. On typewriters, the shift lock key (which is slightly different) tended to be used when people wanted to add emphasis to a word or phrase.

As for modern computers, it is less useful. When one of the keyswitches on my keyboard failed, I replaced it with the keyswitch from the capslock since I figured it was the one key I was guaranteed to never use.

Capslock exists to make typing in allcaps easy. I use it most when I'm in a C project with lots of macros. I use it about as often as I use ten-key -- just enough to justify its existence, not enough to find alternatives in every os/editor/browser/etc that I use.

I used to use Caps Lock when rewriting my sloppy SQL for production. But VIM makes it very easy to 'uppercase' a word with `gUiw`.

Yep. That's one editor that I use, and only double the keystrokes.

Sometimes I use caps lock for its intended purpose. Probably not nearly enough to justify its existence as a physical key that takes up space, but at least a little.

Lots of old documents with rules about writing ridiculously large parts of them in ALL CAPS. For no reason at all, that I can determine.

Notepad++ has a toolbar option that will uppercase all the currently selected text. Write a paragraph normally and then uppercase it with one click.

Lots of tools have this. IntelliJ has it mapped to ctrl shift U by default I think.

In vim gU makes the selection/motion uppercase, gu makes it lowercase and ~ toggles each of its characters' cases.

All-caps mode exists as a safe space for FORTRAN programmers.

why do capital letters even still exist? what’s the point really?

This is a rabbit hole that I followed as well. There's some good articles if you search for it.

Auto doesn't make total sense to me, but it seems originally the Romans had only the letters we know as capitals, and none of the extra characters like semicolon.

IIRC sometime in the middle ages lower case letters were added, but it's not clear to me why and how it ended up getting a bunch of different rules (eg German capitalises nouns but in English it's only proper nouns).

Here's an interesting article on where and why they get commonly used in legal documents and contracts.

https://www.termsfeed.com/blog/all-caps-legal-agreements/

There are also theories out there about why our names appear in all-caps on government documents, relating to the concept of treating an individual as a 'corporation'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com