Caps Lock, How I Loathe Thee
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with In preparation for a summer chock full of coding, I’ve been working on getting ergonomically prepared for using emacs. All this ctrl shortcutting is a recipe for disaster that I want to avoid. To this end, I’ve been reading about what other people have been doing to improve their emacs experience.
Now, I’m not so hardcore that I need something like this:
I can understand why some people would need this kind of system to make their lives easier, but I a) don’t have $200 to spend on a keyboard and b) don’t need it. Yet.
But one thing that I keep reading about (and discovering on my own) is the rancor directed at the Caps Lock key. Personally, I can’t help but agree. When was the last time you used the Caps Lock key? Seriously. I’m not saying it has to be removed (though I wouldn’t care) - but it damn well shouldn’t be in such a valuable location. Nowadays, to prevent people from accidentally hitting the key, they cut out part of the right side of the key.
[image via http://matt.blogs.it/]
See? Isn’t cutting out part of the key so that people don’t accidentally hit it a sure sign of it’s total and absolute uselessness? The answer is yes. Adrian Sutton writes that the biggest reason not to move the control key to where Caps Lock is currently situated is that everyone (minus the UNIX geeks) knows where the control key already is. And that’s fine, I’d be okay with duplicating the control key. What I don’t understand is her further justification on why the current control key position makes sense:
Now think of the most common keyboard shortcuts used on computers these days (think Windows users, not emacs users):
* Control-Z
* Control-X
* Control-C
* Control-V
* Control-Y (Redo)Apart from the crazy idea of making control-Y the shortcut for redo (it’s typically control-shift-z on Mac which is arguably slightly better - read on for why), all those shortcuts are in the bottom left corner of the keyboard. More importantly though, they form the “control home row”. Try this experiment, put your left hand on the standard home row (of a US-English QWERTY keyboard) and then reach your little finger down to the control key. Now, if you’re a contortionist, you’ll have kept your other fingers on the home row but it’s actually easier to slide your entire hand down and just slightly to the left, letting your little finger lead. Your fingers then wind up on control, z, x, c and your thumb below the space bar. Since you’ve lead with your little finger it will get there just slightly ahead of the other fingers so that you hit control first followed rapidly by whichever of those keys you wanted. What this positioning means is that once you get used to control being where it is it’s actually quite fast even though it’s small mostly because it’s a more natural position for your hand. Note that Fitts law only applies to computer interfaces and not strictly to the real world (it does apply if all other factors are equal).
Now wait a minute. Having the control key where Caps Lock currently is located doesn’t make it any harder to hit ctrl-c or ctrl-v. In fact, according to Fitts law, the Caps Lock location is closer to where your hand normally is on the keyboard, making it easier to hit, instead of moving your pinky all the way down to the present location of control.
Long story short - Try making your Caps Lock key into a control key as well (UNIX|Mac OSX|Windows), and see how much easier it is. Note, this doesn’t just apply to emacs. One quick example: I use ctrl-alt-1 and ctrl-alt-2, etc, to switch between workspaces on Ubuntu. Try hitting ctrl-alt-1 with control in the current position. Now try it with control located where Caps Lock is. See?
If you aren’t using the accursed key anyway, you might as well put it to good use.
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Fitts law does not apply to the real world - particularly when the physical attributes of your fingers and their natural movements dwarf the effects of closeness or size. Control-Z requires you to move your fingers off of the home row regardless of which position the caps lock key is in (you would normally use your little finger to press Z but your little finger is busy holding down control) and undo is a far more common operation than switching workspaces (undo is in fact the most common operation according to usability research). That said, having control in *both* places is probably better than in either one and I have no argument against removing caps lock as an option. It is critically important to keep caps lock for accessibility reasons (think of someone with only one arm trying to type, much easier to hit caps lock to get capital letters and turn it off again).
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(Post Author)
I’ll buy that Fitts law isn’t particularly useful in this case, but ergonomically speaking, reaching your pinky down to that control key feels a lot worse than moving it to the left.
But since we can agree on having control in both places, I suppose we can just leave it that. We can relegate Caps Lock to the other “reject” keys like Scroll Lock.
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I somewhat agree Brian, but I’d rather see the Caps Lock in the upper left or right position (like where the eject/F12 key is on a mac laptop) making me move my hand up towards the screen to activate uppercase lettering. I equate Caps Lock to a function key anyway so why shouldn’t it be in that area of the keyboard?
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(aβ Member)
Does anyone use the right Ctrl key to do these shortcuts? It seems to me like that was the intended usage since one could hit Ctrl with the right and ZXCF etc. on the left. But I’ve never done this. On my Mac keyboard the control key is very far from my poor little pinky resting on the semicolon.
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Here’s my storing of OS X key swapping:
http://marc.abramowitz.info/archives/2006/04/30/side-effect-of-the-switch/
I’ve since added this program which really helped me to unlearn my habits:
http://www.thewoodwards.us/sw/CAPSWarn/
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I actually use capslock when I type. Is that weird? IF I’M GONNA TYPE IN CAPS, I’ll hit caps lock instead of holding shift. But I do use control (command, actually; I’m on a Mac) a whole ton more than caps lock. I say we switch ‘em.
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The real problem here is emacs. Its nice to know that it is there no matter what environment I could be in, but its got an interface designed for terminals that have probably decomposed by now.
Even the X version is a usability nighmare: modes all over the plce, standard breaking ctrl commands, wacky three step copy-paste. It would be a good start if it could recognize the technological marvel that is a MOUSE.
The fact that you have to prepare for extensive emacs use speaks for itself.
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(Post Author)
I agree that there are definitely some very wonky things about emacs, and I’m not a zealot by any stretch of the imagination. But, I am doing things through the terminal and there aren’t that many better options.
But like I said, the control key is hard to use for any control+alt commands. And when you hardly use caps lock, why not have the control key in a better location?
Emacs may be part of the problem, but I’m talking in general about the infrequent use of caps lock and why the hell it’s still there.
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I love capslock. What really annoys me is when they turn the enter key into a huge boot-shape and cut backspace in half to make room for [| \] on the number row.
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(aβ Member)
Had to get my two cents in:
@Adrian - You refer to the fact that when you move your pinky to the control key, unless you’re a “contortionist” you’ll move your hand to accomodate it, but I am most certainly not a contortionist and my hand and other fingers stay exactly where they are when I move my pinky down. Maybe I just have big hands (aside: the XBox old fatty duke is the best controller ever, just because it’s the only one big enough to fit my hands), but the situation you describe as natural would give me an ultra cramped feeling if I ever tried to do it. Consequently, I think that whole region of the keyboard is poorly designed and scrunched up.
@Grant - I could never use the right control key for that sort of thing because most programs that I’m using control commands for - like Photoshop and Blender - use a standard one hand on keyboard and one on mouse positioning.
@Nikolaus - When do you ever need to type in all caps?
@Pong - Yeah.
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alwaysBETA » Follow-Up Friday
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