Why would I need Caps Lock? [closed]

Question

From my experience Caps Lock key is only a problem. Sometimes I'll want to press Shift, but will instead hit Caps Lock. Sometimes I'll want to press TAB (I'm a software developer, so I want that very often), but again I'll hit Caps Lock. So suddenly all letters become capital which I didn't want. When I need to use all capitals (which is sooo rare) I can just hold Shift.

Caps Lock was driving me nuts to such extent that I just removed the key from the keyboard - it was useless for me. Still I wonder...

Are there scenarios when I would really benefit from using the Caps Lock key?

Answer 1

YOU MAY FIND THE CAPS LOCK USEFUL IF YOU WANT TO ANNOY LOTS OF PEOPLE BY WRITING A WHOLE SENTENCE IN CAPITAL LETTERS, PARTICULARLY IF YOU WANT TO WRITE A LONG SENTENCE IN SUCH A MANNER, ALTHOUGH I BELIEVE THAT SHORT SENTENCES WRITTEN IN CAPITALS ARE ALSO ANNOYING TO LOOK AT.

(JESUS WEPT. THAT LOOKS HORRIBLE.)

Answer 2

It makes great remapping to Ctrl so that you don't have to strain your pinkies by trying to get all the way to the corners.

Answer 3

Its probably useless for the majority but i think its very useful for a one hand amputee person.

Answer 4

Rather than taking out the Caps Lock, you can just Disable Caps Lock.
The article also describes how to to Change Caps Lock into a SHIFT key.

But seriously speaking, I do use the Caps Lock when typing a long upper-case word, like CAPSLOCK.

Answer 5

It's another key. You only have 100 and so of them, and most of them have a purpose. Caps Lock, to you, and I, falls in the same category as Scroll Lock, or Pause/Break, or frankly most of the F keys. You see "Useless", I see "Opportunity".

Grab a copy of AutoHotKey, tell that caps lock to get out of your face, and do what you want. I have mine set to focus the window in the center of my primary monitor, or if held for half a second open up Executor, and then execute upon releasing the key. Don't remove the key, remove its function!

Answer 6

Not a direct answer, but just thought I'd add that I work in an office with a pretty high proportion of slightly older female admin staff, and from what I've seen most of them never touch the shift key, and I mean never.

It's worrying seeing them log in of a morning, because you can see them setting/unsetting Caps Lock half way though thier password, and seeing them turn Caps Lock on to capitalise the first letter and then turn it off again after the first letter to type the rest of the word is almost as comical as it is disturbing...

So, I would say the Caps Lock key is there primarily for historical reasons, but as per other answers here there are some (fairly niche) uses for it still.

Answer 7

historical footnote

OLPC decided to remove the CAPS LOCK key from its keyboard layouts.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Keyboard_design#Omit_CAPS_LOCK

http://www.olpcnews.com/hardware/keyboard/no_caps_lock_key_so.html

Answer 8

There aren't very many uses these days. Excel capitalizes for itself as necessary, Windows is not case-sensitive, rarely are paths or filenames in case-sensitive operating systems all-caps, etc. Rather than ripping out the key though, it's possible to disable it on Windows and Linux. Probably on OS X too, I just haven't seen a hack for it personally.

Answer 9

I know someone who has mapped the "caps lock" key to function the same as CTRL. It's often easier to reach than the left-side CTRL key. He works in emacs, so if you do actully want something in all caps, you just have to write it lowercase, mark it and do C-x C-u.

Answer 10

As a developer, I us caps lock for writing SQL, adding constants, and emphasizing particular points on why something can't be done. As a gamer, I re-map the functionality from shift up to caps lock and from ctrl up to shift so I'm not reaching for it. Still fairly useful as far as I'm concerned.

Answer 11

I like to have a second Control key instead of Caps Lock.

In OS X, go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys... and change or turn off Caps Lock, Control, Option and Command.

For more radical key remapping in OS X, use KeyRemap4MacBook. Despite the name, it works on non-Macbook machines, too.

Answer 12

Probably the best answer is that for the 0.00001% of the time you need it, you really need it.

Somewhere there is someone typing in COBOL or FORTRAN maintaining a legacy system, and the program is written in all caps.

Somewhere there is someone creating an emulator for the Commodore-64 that runs under 64-bit Windows 7, and he's writing a BASIC program for it.

I can't imagine the pain that one would feel if I had to write a FORTRAN or COBOL program without caps lock. The pain of just writing the program is bad enough...

Answer 13

Maybe if you were typing lots and lots of constants? Or Excel formulas, because IIRC, Excel formulas are all-caps.

Of course, if you really need it, you can still press the key, it's just that you'll be pressing that funny-looking white thing that sticks out of the gaping hole where the key was, instead of the key itself.

Answer 14

I started using computers 1970 on a nearly daily basis (from mainframes to PCs, notebooks etc.), but there are only a very few instances on which I used the shift-lock key deliberately, mostly for writing capitalized headlines. But there are countless instances when I pushed this key unintentionally, typing tenfinger-system without looking at the keyboard. Therefor I started to remap this key whenever possible from shift-lock to a simple shift-key and I have not missed it since.

Answer 15

You can remap keyboard to change it to do some more useful stuff.

Answer 16

Maybe Caps Lock is a metaphor for how you could live your life. For the average user, they need the stability provided by Caps Lock, operating only in a single mode, where things are as they seem. The shift key is just too shifty for many who may not be attuned to multi-modal thinking, for case flip-flopping as it were.

I notice this is a lot teaching typing to students in the developing world, where education systems don't prepare students for abstract thinking in the way other school systems might.

Answer 17

I'm also a programmer. The caps lock is useful to me when I am typing the names of constants (e.g. PI) in languages where the convention is to type them in all caps.

Outside programming, it is also sometimes useful when I am filling in forms for which it is required or seems desirable to complete the form in all caps. (Such as using L (el) instead of 1 (one) to avoid possible confusion.)

Answer 18

I always hit the CAP-LOCK key so I have used this for over a year. Works for me http://pitaschio.ara3.net/manual.htm It's free

Answer 19

Ask not what caps lock can do for you... better ask yourself what can YOU do for caps lock.

(Caps,using caps lock, added for emphasis)

Answer 20

On older laptops, you don't have a Windows key, so I remapped the CAPS-LOCK key to that.

--jeroen

Answer 21

Using Linux as operating system, and living in France (but my remark is good for other latin languages), CAPSLOCK is a useful key to make accentuated capital letters, like À É È Ç ...