I turned caps lock on for a week | Hacker News Reader

I turned caps lock on for a week

fusion.net

48 pointscpeterso56 comments

Fun fact: about ten years ago I was working on a research project that involved implementing a high-precision timer mechanism in the Linux kernel. Timer latency is caused mostly by either a) the long 10ms delay between timer interrupts and b) non-preemptible code paths in the linux kernel (having user-space code preempt the kernel was a new thing then).

When we fixed the timer latency problem, it made the non-preemptible code paths more obvious. A lot of those were well-known and there was work at the time to fix them, but one that I stumbled across by accident that I thought was pretty interesting is that when you hit the caps lock key on a PS2 keyboard, the kernel would lock up for seven milliseconds as it negotiated with the keyboard to turn the caps lock light on. (You could also trigger this path without touching the caps lock key by using the "setleds" command.)

I don't know if it's the same thing, but a Hardware teacher in HS used to tell us that was the best way to diagnose a hung windows machine. If capslock didn't light up, then it needed to be rebooted.

This is my test to see if the monitor has malfunctioned or if the machine refuses to wake up from sleep.

Lenovo ditched it on the Thinkpad[0].

I read this and thought, "At long last, Lenovo has realized that they've destroyed ThinkPad keyboards in recent years, and now they're celebrating the ThinkPad's return to its stature as the world's greatest programmer's laptop by restoring the Ctrl key to its traditional position!"

No. No, no, no, that would not be what they have done.

[0] http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/thinkp... o_0

WAT

Ok, seriously. How is putting Home and End there helping anyone? (Also, it just makes it that much harder for me to remap the key to Control, because now I have to remap two keys. Argh.)

For a keyboard that's not full size, I actually kind of like that placement. Shooting your cursor to the beginning or end of a line becomes something you can do one-handed.

Personnaly, I'm madder at people using only lower case (in usual written Human languages, I don't mind it in C (but yes in C strings containing Human language)).

Perhaps that's because I started computing with terminals and teletypes that only had upper case characters, and even made an incursion with punch cards and line printers having too only upper case characters. :-)

It's funny that this item of netiquete, where once mixed case was possible, it was considered that upper case was "shouting" spread so well, while other parts, that I would consider much more important, like avoiding top-posting hasn't. :-(

Why is top-posting still something to avoid?

It took me a while to get used to it, but at this point I consider the war to be won in favour of top-posting, due to Gmail embracing it.

Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.

> Why is top-posting still something to avoid?

Gmail "embraced" it because their editor started out as a textarea and they had no choice. It's a consequence of their programming environment and not some kind of aesthetic choice they carefully considered.

With respect to emails, where the history of the correspondence is well-known to all participants, isn't it actually more convenient to have the new material up first? The chain of previous letters becomes an appendix that can be referred to if needed, but does not sit in the way of the immediate communication. I think in some ways this mimics how snail-mail correspondence works too: you always attach the new message on top, and context can go afterwards, or be referred to by correspondents.

Although, the real shame is that this is a problem at all, given how easy it would be for clients to detect diffs and provide the comment in the way the user wants it.

There actually is a practical application for the caps lock key: I use it to switch between English and Japanese keyboards. The light is a great indicator of the mode you're in.

I use capslock as a compose key

☺

Wow, as someone that switches between two language inputs(coincidentally English/Japanese actually) a lot on a variety of OS's, and never uses caps lock, I think this is a great key-binding.

It's just alt-shift if you set it up through Windows' keyboard options.

Would you be so kind to expand on how to this? And if can be apply to an Yosemite Mac OS system?

These days, all caps makes me go look for SQL keywords in the text...

Capitalization in general is a bit weird, being a bit of an afterthought in western writing. And applied a bit haphazardly. I mean, as a German, I'm used to Capitalizing A Lot More Frequently, on the other hand, I still think writing I is a bit presumptuous.

As for programming languages, it's not just about capital when people get into arguments between CamelCase and snake_case, there's also spacing. Although Ada_Case seems to be pretty rare…

Was it Modula-3 that had KEYWORDS writ large?

It wasn't required, but I habitually capitalized keywords in QBasic. Did not enjoy when Visual Basic tried to correct me about that.

These days I still do it for SQL, though!

Well ... I hate to advertise our technical debt but we've got a couple of mainframes that store every character string in upper case because no one has bothered to convert from the original EBCDIC [1] ... THIS IS REALLY GOING TO BOTHER ME!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC

It looks like EBCDIC supports lower case letters just fine. Any idea why they used all uppercase? I've noticed use of all uppercase on a lot of old systems, and always sort of wondered why. Is there a good technical reason? Maybe a data type that uses less space per letter?

Older line printers and early teletypes didn't have lower case.

EBCDIC has lowercase because it is _Extended_. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCD_(6-bit):

"BCD ("Binary-Coded Decimal"), also called alphanumeric BCD, alphameric BCD, BCD Interchange Code, or BCDIC, is a family of representations of numerals, uppercase Latin letters, and some special and control characters as six-bit character codes.

[...]

IBM later created the 8-bit code EBCDIC (Extended Binary-coded Decimal Interchange Code) based on BCD."

The key itself — Caps Lock — I believe is useless, and occupies valuable real estate. The concept of caps lock, I'm undecided.

As programmer, the most common arguments I hear are usually about the occasional use of it for say, C_IDENTIFIERS[1]. Or perhaps you want to scream, but not hold down shift. Who am I to judge?

Some OSs support (in particular, I know Linux does) a thing called "two shift caps". If you want caps lock, you hit both shift keys simultaneously. Same thing to deactivate. Now, you still have your caps lock for those rare times when you want it, but the physical key is freed up for Control, or Escape, or whatever you fancy.

I personally think it's a wonderful thing, and would love to see it catch on as standard, though I don't know if that'll ever happen.

[1]: gU<movement> in vim helps a lot though.

Is it mostly a tech thing with the upper case hatred? I know several people who type everything in upper case. Emails, texts, everything. I think people who don't spend their working lives at a keyboard may view caps-lock as making typing easier.

I think it is a thing of people who read a lot of text.

I'm not sure that that makes sense. Have those people never read a newspaper, or a book, or done an assignment in class?

Specifications and annotations on construction drawings are typically all caps, as well. In that context, it looks more official and also more legible at various magnification levels.

And U.S. National Weather Service communications are also entirely in upper case. I guess that there are still remote locations that receive them on teletypes that only have upper case. Here's an example:

http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=OK...

I loathe the caps lock key. The first thing I'll do with a brand-new Mac is remap it to Control (SysPrefs -> Keybd -> Modifier Keys). Because thats where the control key belongs, dammit!

Still, from time to time I do type things in all caps. Once or twice I've even considered whether it would be wise to re-enable the caps lock key. In the end, I keep it remapped. My natural tendency is to be acerbic, and caps lock doesn't help me tone that down -- which I need to do. If I didn't, I can imagine that leaving caps lock on permanently would permanently damage some of the relationships I have, particularly those that are mostly online.

I learned to type by using the Caps Lock in lieu of the Shift key-- if it's ever removed from keyboards, I'll be completely screwed.

(I hate two-finger combinations, and am apparently not alone in this-- record-holding speed-typist Sean Wrona uses Caps Lock to capitalize[0])

I dream of a completely modal keyboard set-up such that I can only press one finger at any one time, and then I can get remap Shift permanently.

[0] http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/ultimate-typing-champion-sha...

This is a problem on Ubuntu (my main machine), as the Caps Lock lags enough that if you type at a normal speed:

THis STarts HAppening. (Not a problem for Windows or OSX systems, I can report)

Most bug reports for this behavior tend to be ignored[0].

[0] http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1556152

I love caps lock. Every once in a while I need to type lots of text in all caps and I like not having to ride the shift key when doing this.

I personally can't understand why does people hate so much the Caps Lock key... The shift key gets my pinky finger tired and I prefer to use it just for symbols.

The number of times I need to use caps lock is much lower than the number of times I accidentally hit it while doing something else, causing me to have to correct whatever I mistakenly capitalized. This means that it is a net negative in terms of time. That being said, the real issue I think is that it takes such a prominent place on the keyboard that could be used for more important keys.

I just write in lowercase and then type VU to convert the whole line to uppercase. #vim

That doesn't work if you still need some lower case mixed in.

In that case I'd probably write it all in lowercase with a few caps mixed in, and then flip it with V~. But I can't say I've ever needed to write such a sentence.

Caps lock for me is delete.

Think about how often you hit delete then think about how far away it is, then remap it to capslocks and enjoy.

If your on a Mac use this awesome utility to easily remap your capslock to the delete key: https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/seil.html.en

Most people who believe Caps Lock can be ditched are probably slow typists. How on earth do you touch type an acronym quickly without using Caps Lock?

It's also ridiculous that a company like Google would ditch a key just like that. Do they research stuff before taking drastic actions?

I turned on num lock for a week once, but I didn't write a blog post about it...

Yah well numlock isn't exactly sitting in prime real-estate.

No but it is another this that is antiquated about our keyboard layout: the numpad is a legacy that isn't really usefull. I have changed from a full size keyboard layout to tenkeyless one a couple of years ago, and the only time I am missing it, is when I have to print a character through an ASCII code (like those accent in German or French).

FACSINATING! PRAY TELL, WHAT AMAZING THINGS DID YOU LEARN?

sorry...grumpy at the internet.

edit: used FASCINATING twice.

The caps lock key is very useful, if you rebind it to something else.

I use it for Enso, which lets you start programs, open files, spellcheck, count words, do math, and things like that.

Using it to swtich between input methods is another good choice.

I've always been i trigued by the CAPS in the BSD license. On what criteria was the text uppercased? Does it give it more weight in a court? Then why isn't every clause uppercased?

ITS BEEN 6 HOURS. I CAN'T BELIEVE THERE ARE NO ALL CAP COMMENTS!

20 MINUTES AND YOUR CAP(ER) REPLY-ER IS HERE

iTs bEeN 6 HoUrS. i cAn't bElIeVe tHeRe aRe nO AlL CaP CoMmEnTs!

USING - http://convertcase.net/

You can’t write “I THINK” or “PERHAPS” in all caps.

Interesting point, I think.

Perhaps.

    SELECT CONTENT FROM ARTICLE;
    > 0 rows returned.

The way I was trained:

    SELECT content FROM article;

The uppers are keywords, the lowers are arguments (column and table name).

My sensei was partly deaf, so he'd shout everything.

FIRST

Wait what? I thought this was a relevant reference to all-caps usage. Did they think I was serious?

People are unbelievably obnoxious about this. You really think the person is yelling and has no idea how to communicate? If so, consider that you may be stupider than the people whose intelligence you're insulting. Patrice O'Neal had a great bit about this.

    I t   i s   a s   s t r a n g e   a n d   u n n e c e s s a r y   a s   t h i s .

Reply on news.ycombinator.com