Comment by dan00
8 hours ago
As a vim, linux, shell guy, I still love my mapping of Caps Lock pressed to CTRL und Caps Lock released to ESC.
Being able to reach CTRL and ESC with the little finger while keeping your hands on the home row keys is great.
Was always my first tweak to a new machine - such an obvious change. Moving to a split keyboard gave me three keys at each thumb - the same kind of realization. We have two thumbs that most keyboards map to a single space bar. The thumb is a really solid finger for modifiers.
Another nice thing about a custom keyboard is not needing to map the keys - it's in the firmware.
I do this but better:
- caps + key = control + key
- tap caps = escape
- caps + space + key = ctrl, opt, cmd + key
All done in my keyboard firmware.
This is the way
This is trivial to map on QMK/ZMK mechanical keyboards too, using mod-tap: https://docs.qmk.fm/mod_tap
Caps Lock <—> Esc should honestly be standardized on keyboards. Esc is used pretty often in my experience while Caps Lock, being modal, only gets the occasional press even when used.