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Caps Lock remapped to compose. Much more useful, especially for those of us who sometimes need to type "other" letters, but prefer US dvorak keyboard layout.
While I agree with the general premise that Caps Lock is in a terrible place on standard US English keyboards -- that's prime real estate and people just don't use it that much -- I swap Caps Lock and Control and have Menu remapped to Compose. If you're typing in English, you're gonna use Control a lot more than Compose. If you use emacs, that's doubly true. And that's about where Compose has been on some keyboards.
what's the compose key? never heard of it but any excuse to not waste a key on caps lock sounds great.
Allows you to do umlauts, accents on letters etc.
E.g., öšéå
to make é (as in pokémon) I do alt + 0233
That's a Windows system, requires a numeric keypad, has been around for a long time. I don't know what its coverage is, though, whether it can do any Unicode character.
kagis
Sounds like not, that Microsoft has its own mapping:
https://www.alt-codes.net/how_to_use_alt_codes/
Problem with the numeric entry systems is that they're kind of a pain to remember. They work all right if you have a small number of symbols that you need to use frequently and can memorize them. But they're less-handy if you've got a wider variety.
GTK-based apps (like, a bunch of Linux GUI apps) will let you do numeric entry of Unicode codepoints if you hit Control-Shift-U and then enter a Unicode codepoint.
Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that the open-source Android onscreen keyboards that I've seen don't support user-configurable popup menus on keys with arbitary characters and text snippets, as it seems like an obvious thing to want to configure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key
Works in X11 and Wayland.
Not as powerful as Emacs's input methods, but it covers a lot of common cases.
Basically, hitting compose causes the next two keystrokes to "combine". For example, / + o = ø, as well as the other letters that are useful to us with extra letters in the alphabet. In addition to that it provides a myriad of other characters such as copyright, trademark, just to name a few.
I don't really need the compose key, but rebinding caps does sound tempting. But what to bind it to... Hmm
I bound it to normal shift, because I fat-finger caps instead of shift all the time anyway lol
Haha fair enough
On Macs, I remap it to the Command (super) key. On Linux, I remap it to Ctrl.
It makes copying, pasting, etc. way more ergonomic and doesn't strain your pinky 😌
I have it activate a layer when held where all the other keys are remapped.
I also use a 45% keyboard (https://wilba.tech/jd45) and its done in the keyboard's firmware (https://qmk.fm/), so I need the extra keys.
I have an older model of the JD45 with a full bottom row.
I've been meaning to get my hands on a QMK board, but didn't get around to it yet. Having an extra layer with macros or something sounds super powerful. I wonder whether I'm able to replicate a similar behavior without touching the board's firmware. But I guess with enough registered keybinds it should work lol
I'm using it as a Super key on my 80s AT keyboard
Yes, love the compose key. My native language (Dutch) uses accents occasionally, but typing on a regular Dutch layout with dead keys is awful, especially as a software dev who uses loose quotes a lot.
It's also great for symbols. No more ddg'ing "euro symbol" and copying from Wikipedia, just type compose, e, =.
Does dutch have ß as well?
Also, noggie keyboard is alright for normal typing, but once you get into more geeky computery, some characters are awfully placed. ' " / { > just to name a few. That's why I started using US layout to begin with, and I later migrated to YS Dvorak because I'm that guy (PS: You should totally switch to Dvorak, bro)
No thankfully Dutch doesn't have any additional letters, just accents.
I have been wanting to try different keyboard layouts for a while. The issue is that my employer probably wouldn't be super happy with like 50% output for some days or weeks.
I was thinking that too for a while, but upon switching to dvorak my typing speed picked up surprisingly quickly.
On that note, I never bought into the meme about it being possible to type faster with dvorak. It might be true in theory, but in practice the bottleneck is fingers and old habits. I type around the same speed with dvorak as I did with qwerty. The main advantage to dvorak is that it's much more comfortable.
I had a realization around 2012 that I would most likely be using a keyboard for a living for the rest of my life, so that's why I started experimenting with alternatives to qwerty.
What? And lose one of the disco buttons? (along with scroll lock and num lock)
Flashing lights and a loud beep if set up right hehe.