Caps Lock

I'm fed up with accidentally hitting the Caps Lock key and having to correct my typing when I realise what I've done. OK, I'm using Windows and there are solutions available, some better than others. Microsoft's is typically feeble in that you can ask Windows to emit a beep when you turn Caps Lock on and another beep when you turn it off.

Why am I moaning about Windows in the Apple forum? Well, how do the wizards of Cupertino make the Caps Lock key easy to control? Do they do it better than Microsoft? I don't have any Apple kit so I'm asking you fanboiz and girlz.

You want something that knows when you've hit Caps Lock accidently and when you've done it deliberately? Good luck with that!

Other than a warning beep, what more could be done to solve your problem? The only thing that I can think of is to disable it completely. AFAIK OS X offers no other solution.

In reply to a post by AEP:

You want something that knows when you've hit Caps Lock accidently and when you've done it deliberately? Good luck with that!

I always hit Caps Lock accidentally. If I want to type a string of CAPITAL LETTERS, I keep my pinkie finger on the Shift key, so the Caps Lock key is redundant. I've always done this. A Registry hack will disable the Caps Lock key, and there are third-party utilties that you can use if the thought of hacking the Windows Registry makes you want to dive under your duvet. I'm just wondering what alternatives OS X offers.

In reference to arstechnica.com/apple/news/2007/10/apples-new-keyboard-protects-fro...:

Apple's new keyboard protects from OVERZEALOUS TYPISTS
By Jeff Smykil | Published 4 years ago

Unique among the rest of the keys, Caps Lock doesn�t activate immediately upon strike. There�s a very small time window � perhaps a quarter of a second � where if you release the key inside the window, the keystroke is ignored.

In reply to a post by AEP:

You want something that knows when you've hit Caps Lock accidently and when you've done it deliberately? Good luck with that!

Other than a warning beep, what more could be done to solve your problem? The only thing that I can think of is to disable it completely. AFAIK OS X offers no other solution.

I want something that prevents me from hitting Caps Lock accidentally. Moving it out of the way would be one solution. Providing tactile feedback would be another. For example, making the Caps Lock key latching.

The placement of the Caps Lock and Shift keys replicate the keys on a mechanical typewriter where there was ample tactile feedback. Modern keyboards do not give you this feedback and work-arounds such as LEDs on the key-cap or elsewhere do not really help. Software 'solutions' such as window pop-ups or system sounds are even more useless.

There has to be a better way but computer manufacturers do not seem to be interested.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reference to arstechnica.com/apple/news/2007/10/apples-new-keyboard-protects-fro...:

Apple's new keyboard protects from OVERZEALOUS TYPISTS
By Jeff Smykil | Published 4 years ago

Unique among the rest of the keys, Caps Lock doesn�t activate immediately upon strike. There�s a very small time window � perhaps a quarter of a second � where if you release the key inside the window, the keystroke is ignored.

Sounds interesting. It should be doable in Windows.

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

Sounds interesting. It should be doable in Windows.

Also of interest- it only works in one direction, ie

If Caps Lock is off, a brief tap won't turn it on but

If Caps Lock is on, a brief tap will turn it off

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

Sounds interesting. It should be doable in Windows.

Also of interest- it only works in one direction, ie

If Caps Lock is off, a brief tap won't turn it on but

If Caps Lock is on, a brief tap will turn it off

The next question is, 'In your experience, does it work?'

On the whole, yes... I still occasionally turn it on accidentally, but nowhere near as often as I used to with Windows!

Alternatively, it's easily turned off under SysPrefs.

So if you never use the Caps Lock key then disable it. Simple.

In reply to a post by AEP:

So if you never use the Caps Lock key then disable it. Simple.

Mais naturellement! I'm working-up the first post for my blog, hence the research.

I thought of gluing a drawing pin to the Caps Lock key. This would certainly discourage me from hitting it accidentally. I might mock-up a picture and put it in my blog.

System Preferences
Keyboard
Modifier Keys
Caps Lock Key - Select "No Action"

Double tapping it to turn it on seems to me to the most logical way to handle accidental presses, would be extremely hard to turn it on by accident then.

You can use something like AutoHotkey to bind events to key presses, a lot of people use it to to remap CapsLock completely.

Just had a quick look and it's dead easy to create a script to enable on double click and disable on single click -

Text
1 23 45 67 89 1011 1213 1415 16	CapsLock:: state := GetKeyState("Capslock", "T")  ; True if CapsLock is ON, false otherwise.if state {  SetCapsLockState, off   return} else{   If (A_TimeSincePriorHotkey<400) and (A_TimeSincePriorHotkey<>-1)  {     SetCapsLockState, on            SoundBeep, 750, 500     Return  } }

Obviously, the problem with that is that you'd have to have it running all the time and it's a third party app. Though that's not really that much of an issue as you can compile scripts and then add it to start up, then forget about it.

Learn to type?

In reply to a post by captainmouse:

Learn to type?

I could touch-type pretty well (albeit slowly) on my old Olympia typewriter. Computer keyboards put paid to that. They're just not the same.

The classic IBM keyboards were good, but modern ones are all rubbish.

On a humorous but also serious note, you should maybe get one of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_keyboard

Now, if they did those with the ability to also design your own keyboard, so you could move the caps lock key out the way to somewhere safe, where it doesn't annoy you as much, that would be pretty cool.

Of course, this lacks tactile response which may be annoying.

Also, we already have the potential to 'design our own keyboards' with tablet interfaces, but making a tablet available purely for displaying a virtual keyboard is just plain silly.

Maybe if they get to the point where tablet technology can be quickly deployed into desktop surfaces (like in TRON, the movie), then your prayers will be answered as you have the ability to make the keyboard any size, dimension and position you wish, with the option of physically moving keys to different locations also. Could be quite fun.

In reply to a post by AEP:

The classic IBM keyboards were good, but modern ones are all rubbish.

Indeed. I have an original, pristine one, still boxed. A gift from a colleague who was an IBM keyboard engineer. I love the tactile feel and, of course, the CLICK