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Comment by brhsagain | Hacker News Reader

Here's my setup on a standard Apple Magic Keyboard:

    caps lock  -> ctrl
    tilde      -> escape
    left ctrl  -> tilde

I borrowed this from the Happy Hacking Keyboard layout and haven't looked back since. I can now press escape with my left ring finger (right next to '1'), ctrl with my left pinky (right next to 'a'), and when I do need to type a tilde or backtick (not often) it's right under shift. On some keyboards I also map backslash to backspace and vice versa, to bring backspace closer. No more finger stretching!

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That's where the ESC used to be on the MSX.. https://www.msx.org/wiki/images/6/6b/Nms8245a.jpg

I haven't used a Happy Hacking Keyboard, but why not left ctrl -> escape and tilde remains tilde? Perhaps it's just my hands but I feel reaching left ctrl is easier than reaching the tilde key, and I imagine hitting escape is more frequent than tilde (?)

Hmm, it's the opposite for me, somehow reaching my ring finger toward tilde just feels easier than curling my left pinky downward toward left ctrl. Plus my muscle memory is used to moving up and to the left to find escape.

I don't know about remapping ESC at all. You can get it by typing ^[ instead.

On a French keyboard, the 'tilde' key (left of the 1) is the symbol '²' which I hardly ever use. Therefore I remapped it to the € symbol using AHK. No more AltGr key combination to get it! (and I keep the '²' symbol with shift-'tilde')

I don't get it. There's already a ctrl on the left reachable with left pinky. What is missing is right-ctrl which you often need (tmux, vim, emacs...).

Similar to caps lock being ctrl when held and escape when tapped, I set up return to be ctrl when held and return when tapped. Nice keyboard symmetry this way too.

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