As a long-time user of machines that put a Control key to the left of A, such as the Amiga and Sun keyboards, I naturally have ctrl/caps swapped on my Kubuntu 8.04 install.
This usually works just fine, as my Caps key still is Ctrl, but Shift+"Caps" has become Backspace, so half of my Ctrl+Shift+* shortcuts work anymore. Is there a way to undo Colemak's mangling of "Caps"?
Mangling and messing, huh? How about showing a little more kindness and empathy when asking for advice?
I'd look into the file you're using, whether the console or xkbd one. There's a line in those that govern the CapsLock behaviour and it should be pretty easy for a coder to fix it. If you can't figure out how, ask again.
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I meant mangling in the jargon sense, rather than the English connotation. Sorry about that.
I've managed to find the relevant Colemak definition in «/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us», but I'm wondering if there's a place to change the Caps key that won't get overwritten when Kubuntu upgrades the keyboard files.
I'm curious about this too. Once my accuracy goes back to 100% I'm expecting to get more use out of the caps key as a replacement of the enter key to take out the rightward movement of the wrist.
The enter key in that location would be pretty convenient, but I doubt that I could ever get used to losing my second backspace again. Also getting 100% accuracy would be something hard. Most of the time the best I can get is something like 98% when I concentrate like crazy, and even then sometimes my fingers get naughty
Colemak typist
Yes, I doubt that most typists will get much above 98%. And a 2% usage means a semi-common key, which ideally should be in a nice position.
Colemak itself hasn't moved around any non-letter keys apart from the CapsLock, and that one's causing a lot of technical trouble because none of the operating systems 'expect' that kind of thing. It's nice enough if you can implement it; my own CapsLock key is used mostly as the 'Extend/Transpose' key in PKL nowadays, so I can at least quite easily get both Enter (Caps+'o') and Backspace (Caps+';') with it - and a heap of other useful keys too (such as Caps+'UNEI' for arrows). But I've also had it as an SGCAPS modifiers which enabled me to switch to greek characters (which is only useful if you are a bit of a Γρεεκ γεεκ like me, I suppose...).
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I've been trying to replace the backspace on the Caps Lock key with Ctrl for hours now but I can't figure out the syntax!
CapsLock = OEM_1 0 ={backspace} *{CapsLock} ={backspace} ={backspace} ={backspace} ; Caps Lock
What do I replace ={backspace} with to get Ctrl instead? I've tried ={ctrl}, ={control}, ={Ctrl}, ={Control}, but none of them seem to work. I've searched the alternative layout files without success. Please, help!
On X11, it's "Control_L" (left control key).
After replacing "BackSpace" with that on the <CAPS> key, you also have to turn it into a modifier key:
xmodmap -e "add control = Control_L"I've managed to find the relevant Colemak definition in «/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us», but I'm wondering if there's a place to change the Caps key that won't get overwritten when Kubuntu upgrades the keyboard files.
Just make a copy of that file (eg. "myus") and make changes there. In your xorg.conf file or setxkbmap commands, just use "myus(colemak)" instead of "us(colemak)"...
On X11, it's "Control_L" (left control key).
After replacing "BackSpace" with that on the <CAPS> key, you also have to turn it into a modifier key:
xmodmap -e "add control = Control_L"
But I'm using Portable Keyboard Layout on Windows.