Comment by Eji1700 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Eji1700 | Hacker News Reader

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The keyboard hobby has led me to realize a few major things-

1. The capslock key should not be where it is. In no sane layout should such an easy to reach key serve such a niche purpose.

2. The spacebar is a massive waste of space. I LOVE split space layouts (typing on a mercutio right now). Having all 3 "spaces" act as space on tap helps, and makes it easy to hold for modifiers.

3. Having the numpad/arrow keys right under my right hand (arrows on jkli, numpad basically on jkl = 456, functions in the same layout) is SO much faster than having to move your hand to get to those kinds of keys. The navigation keys being at my fingertips is ESPECIALLY useful as a coder where using things like home/end/pgup/pgdown can really help you move through your code faster.

I'm now at my end game (mercutio 40 on my "entertainment" machine, a crkbd at work (soon be be a cornish zen), and a discipline 60 for my gaming machine....seriously rougelikes are the only reason it's not all 40's), and it's been a hell of a path. I really hope the market expands a bit more because there's a lot of nice things when people start getting into the hobby, but it's a rough hobby to get into given how expensive it can get.

Just going to throw this out there because I haven’t seen it referenced much on HN, but as someone who spends 8+ hours a day in one flavor of AutoCAD or another I am constantly cycling between caps lock and standard. Nearly every modern plan set produced is done in all caps, and with nearly all standard office communication being done through email or slack switching from one to the other easily is really quite important to me and my colleagues.

Sounds like the software should auto capitalise those labels/annotations...

This is like the one valid caps lock use case you hear about. Would having caps lock be somewhere near scroll lock be a bad thing even in your use case? For the vast majority of people and use cases it is a near pointless key in a prime spot. Even worse it USED to be that ctrl and caps lock were swapped on early Apple II, IBM PC keyboards but for some unknown reason IBM decided to swap em.

Just have shift on a thumb key so it's easy to hold when you need it.

Layout software like Indesign simply uses a Standard/All Caps/Small Caps setting that you can apply to a style for this, why would you need to type it all in caps?

When in Emacs I use a custom command that converts lowercase underscore-separated words to uppercase after typing the word out in lowercase so I don't have to use shift or capslock.

Numpad removal is similar. I'm a heavy CAD/spreadsheet user and I cannot live without a numpad, which is by far the fastest way to input numbers. Most DIY builds, its the first thing to be removed.

Even in cases like that (SQL is sometimes supposed to be all caps), it's pretty trivial to either make it all caps, or to throw caps on another layer and quickly access it.

It might actually justify it's positional priority in your case if you're literally switching between CAD and normal communication a ton, but even then i suspect you wouldn't mind it somewhere else.

I think the capslock position is a holdover from manual typewriters. Pressing the shift or capslock keys actually lifted up a fair chunk of the internal metal of the thing, so it was fairly strenuous. You also use to do all-caps for headings and such much more often.

I learned to touch type on manual typewriters in school. I was the only boy in the class as it was geared towards secretarial work - but I knew I was going to have a career on computers so thought it was worthwhile.

As I believe the function of the caps/shift lock on most, if not all, manual typewriters that had it was to physically lock the shift key's mechanism down in some manner, its position above the shift key was also largely dictated by the mechanism, as it needs to be positioned along the shift key's arm.

The existence of the caps lock can be ascribed both to all-caps being more useful as a heading and for emphasis on manual typewriters, where only one typeface and size was available, as you point out, and to the substantial mechanism making it more difficult to hold the shift key down while typing.

Surprisingly, however, the size of caps lock on most modern keyboards doesn't seem to come from manual typewriters. At least on pre-1960s/70s manual typewriters, caps locks seem to be the same size as normal keys, if not smaller; shift keys are often larger, but are also not enormous. Most examples of large caps lock keys that I can find seem to start only one electric typewriters, exactly where they wouldn't seem as useful. It is possible that there are practical reasons why having a long keycap for a key requiring substantial force would be problematic for manual typewriters, but this still doesn't explain why the caps lock would become larger on electric typewriters, only why the shift might. So I'm left rather confused as to why they became the standard.

(Of course, on my keyboards, they are usually remapped to control, or to a control/escape combination.)

Most devs that had apple’s touch bar keyboard remapped caps to escape. I enjoyed that change so much that I did it everywhere. Voila, a useful key within easier reach… especially for vim.

It’s a rough “hobby” because all the options make it possible to build the perfect board but it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what you really like.

I say “hobby” because I just started wanting a nice keyboard at the start and to be honest I find building boards boring.

I fully agree with 1 & 2 at least. So I remapped capslock with delete and space with enter. (Numpad is too thoroughly embedded in my head to move it.)

Easier/lazier than building a new KB.

Though it does present some issues when using other machines. And people thoroughly freak out if they jump on mine.

You use enter more frequently than you use spaces?

Ha, you are right.. not when I am writing. The spacebar is a contextual remap when I am drawing / drafting / modeling.

Caps lock is where and how it is because its importance for typewriters. When you can’t change fonts, caps are important to realize hierarchy. I agree the contexts have now changed.

> The navigation keys being at my fingertips is ESPECIALLY useful as a coder where using things like home/end/pgup/pgdown can really help you move through your code faster.

This is why Vim key bindings are the first thing I install for any editor.

I’m curious about how you use spaces and arrows. Is it that you have space work on tab but on hold it becomes fn1 or allows you to jump to a different layer?

I don’t have split spaces but it had never occurred to me to use space as a mod!

Yeah, I remapped my the caplock to escape, best change ever.

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