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cAPS Lock Anguish!
19 August 2012 | by Several times a week I have been on the brink of writing this. It’s time to get it off my chest. I curse whoever it was that decided to place the caps lock key to the left of the A on the keyboard. For what seems like one time in two when I go to type a letter “a” I hit caps lock instead (or as well.) I hAVE USually typed several more letters before I realize my mistake and have to bACKTRack, to the accompaniment of loud cursing.
A couple of decades ago, in the days of MS-DOS, it was possible to write a little program called a TSR (from Terminate and Stay Resident.) This program could intercept your keystrokes and convert them to anything you liked. I wrote one that trapped Shift+3 and turned it into the pound sign instead of the US default hash (#). Microsoft provided a utility called KEYB.COM that could do this but it occupied several K of memory and in those days you counted every byte.
I don’t know if that is possible in Windows. But I’d really love a program that could intercept the caps lock key and turn it into an A (or rather, an a) unless you gave it a long press!
3 Responses to “cAPS Lock Anguish!”
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Pop the caps lock key out if you have a desktop keyboard, i did
Good advice, Jamie. Some keyboards put a recess on the side of the caps lock so you don’t accidentally hit it and it works great. I just got a high-end mechanical switch keyboard and the only flaw is how close the caps lock is next to the “a” key. I just removed it per your advice and it works great.
Julan,
remapping a windows keyboard is fairly simple via the registry. There are various free tools on the market for that purpose, just google for “windows keyboard remapping”. Caps lock indeed sucks. I never met anyone who needs it.