cheetaking243 (imported) wrote: Thu Oct 18, 2012 9:56 am I'm really curious as to why the caps lock key even exists. I've maybe used it once in my entire writing life, and the other 99.9% of the times it's just an annoying thing that I hit by mistake. I actually think it's much easier just to hold down the shift key while I'm typing when I want something all-caps.

I remapped this key as a russian/latin keymap switch. It is more convenient to reach one key, than to use alt-shift or ctrl-shift combo.

Some UNIX users remap esc or ctrl to it. The place and key is convenient, it is the function, that is wrong.

Caps lock looks like a legacy from typewriters days, where it was difficult to hold shift, cause it raised a big part of the mechanism. I know, what I am speaking about, cause I used mechanical typewriter.

See, for example, Sun 6 keyboard for proper key in this place .

a while back I was cleaning my MS natural Keyboard and I pried the caps lock key off of the board, and it broke, I just left it off. If I need all caps I just push a pen in the hole to set it, then when I'm done I push it in again to release it. Never has it been an issue.

Ken

fhunter wrote: Thu Oct 18, 2012 2:44 pm I remapped this key as a russian/latin keymap switch. It is more convenient to reach one key, than to use alt-shift or ctrl-shift combo.

Some UNIX users remap esc or ctrl to it. The place and key is convenient, it is the function, that is wrong.

Caps lock looks like a legacy from typewriters days, where it was difficult to hold shift, cause it raised a big part of the mechanism. I know, what I am speaking about, cause I used mechanical typewriter.

See, for example, Sun 6 keyboard for proper key in this place .

fhunter - been there, done that.

I learned to type in 1962 using an Underwood standard typewriter. When you wanted to insert a capital letter, you had to lift up the entire carriage assembly.

There are actually quite a few symbols on the numeric key row that can be used but I'm not sure that's exactly a good idea. At one time I wanted to learn and use the Dvorak keyboard layout however it used to be that your keyboard would keep reverting back to the standard layout and that wasn't just for passwords either so I finally gave up. I think I could do it now but back then I just kept having problems with that. Right now I have a Latin American keyboard layout (Fr, Span, Port) which once in a while isn't as convenient. I've also wanted to be able to write in Hiragana (Japanese alphabet for English et al) since there used to be an internet club for this somewhere out there and also Cyrillic for English but never got around to that. I guess the best thing for all of this would be to use several different computers at once.

I had a coworker who used a DVORAK keyboard and he swore it was faster and great and wonderful.

So one day, he's in my office because I had to get a fact sheet from him and I badgered him into giving me the information required for a fact sheet. Like Dictation Dude... Then he saw me type and for the first time in his DVORAK daze realized that someone could use a QWERTY keyboard just as fast as his DVORAK. So we took ten minutes to compose the fact sheet and he left.

Now I'm not a fast typist and I've slowed down considerably but in my experience, DVORAK typists are only faster because they've aught themselves to be faster and QWERTY typists who were taught on real typewriters (the ones before electricity) can type just as fast as anyone else.

PS -- I own a manual Royal with elite type that holds a 14 inch legal page in landscape and it's fun to type on... shakes the desk and rattles the bones

Anyone using any type of keyboard can type just as fast as another if given enough practice with it. Speed in typing is all about repetition, repetition, repetition. I don't even use the standard fingering layout (rather than knowing where each letter is by where my fingers are placed, I type completely by having just pressed single buttons my entire life, and still pretty much just use my first two fingers on each hand when I'm typing,) and I can still type at an average of about 55 words per minute. If anyone uses a single type of keyboard their entire life, whether or not they actually are using it correctly or not, eventually they will pretty much automatically get up to very high typing speeds.

My school didn't even offer typing lessons until 9th grade, and by that time I had already spent so much time on the computer that my habits were pretty much irreversible. I suspect this is the case with a lot of kids nowadays because we're spending so much time on the computer so young in life.

Dave the Dvorak keyboard does improve your typing speed, it has been tested, however its not like the old days with the covers over the keys so you had to learn were the keys were and remember to listen for the bell so you could hit the carriage return with your left hand. Of all the type writers I have used I think I liked the IBM Selectric the best but having today's keyboard with spell check and all the other wonderful features it truly does not matter what key board layout you use as long as your happy with it and it works for you.

As for two finger typing, the fastest person I ever watched was an operator for the rail road, they sent lots of Teletype and it was a manual typewriter, he could pound out a strip faster then any go typist I have ever seen.

Damn, now I am most likely going to have to explain what teletype is for our young friend, I am sure he has never had to deal with a carriage return tape for a printer.

River

Riverwind (imported) wrote: Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:08 pm Dave the Dvorak keyboard does improve your typing speed, it has been tested, however its not like the old days with the covers over the keys so you had to learn were the keys were and remember to listen for the bell so you could hit the carriage return with your left hand. Of all the type writers I have used I think I liked the IBM Selectric the best but having today's keyboard with spell check and all the other wonderful features it truly does not matter what key board layout you use as long as your happy with it and it works for you.

As for two finger typing, the fastest person I ever watched was an operator for the rail road, they sent lots of Teletype and it was a manual typewriter, he could pound out a strip faster then any go typist I have ever seen.

Damn, now I am most likely going to have to explain what teletype is for our young friend, I am sure he has never had to deal with a carriage return tape for a printer.

River

As a two finger typist (I use a couple more now), I used to win $1 bets in high school. People couldnt believe I typed 80+ wpm. My arms usually hurt after a few demonstrations.

I learned on manual typewriters with ribbons and carriages and bells and sheets of paper and (gasp) carbon paper.

We spent hours typing in patterns to learn the keys. Take a sheet of paper and type both front and back, single spaced in eight patterns matching fr4rfv fr4rfv fr4rfv and repeat for each finger on the proper keys. And don't look at the keyboard.

And then suddenly, electrics came along. Then eventually memories for the selectric, after that Xerox word processors.

I used paper tape for computers on occasion... Mostly however those behemoths that punched cards.

Then line editors on screens and by line, I mean only an 80 character line and you edited one character at a time, line by line -- total string editing. Quite a challenge if you didn't know what you were doing.

Now, I won't give up my Mac and WORD with self correction, flagged misspellings, and all the bells and whistles chugging away.

I have a Corona folding portable with only 3 rows of keys. Shift for CAPS and another shift for numbers and symbols.

But I'm using this dumb phone with no keys that you talk to. Then you go back and make corrections.