For its ability to turn a simple e-mail into a shrieked command, this single key has become the subject of a fierce online campaign.
It seems an unlikely target for vitriol, but the "caps lock" key has caused a brouhaha in the online community. It started a week ago, when a Brussels-based programmer named Pieter Hintjens pondered the drawbacks of the seemingly innocuous button, and decided to launch a blog (capsoff.blogspot.com) and a website (capsoff.org) to kick-start a movement that might persuade manufacturers to banish the superfluous plastic lump forthwith.
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The same applies to blogging, as those unfamiliar with "netiquette" unwittingly take to "shouting" their messages. But caps lock causes other problems. Engaged by accident, it can lead us to type line upon line of upper-case text without noticing, or incorrectly enter case-sensitive passwords. Most significantly, Hintjens feels that its prominence on the keyboard is totally out of proportion to its value.
The response from the online community has been immediate and overwhelming. "I always rip caps lock off all my keyboards," comments one user, leading Hintjens to ponder: "Maybe it's time to encourage people to remove their caps lock keys and send them to us. How many would we collect? Would anyone care?" Some clearly would; those resistant to change began firing off expletives at Hintjens to show their devotion to the generic Qwerty lay-out - including programmers who need it to tap out upper-case code. But Hintjens is unrepentant. "Caps lock is like a small pebble in your shoe... it's so annoying that there's a whole sub-industry in software programs to remap the thing (assign a different function to it)."
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Hintjens has shown a willingness to compromise; he's happy to have caps lock moved, rather than obliterated altogether, and perhaps replaced with a key that's more commonly used these days, such as a volume control or a button to eject CDs - or any of the other controls that are appearing on the latest extended multimedia keyboards, which are steadily getting bigger to accommodate all the required keys.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article1221012.eceI'd definitely be in favour of moving it - my little finger often hits it by mistake in combination with, or instead of, 'a'. And unlike other typos, it screws up the subsequent letters, so it's not until you glance at what you're typing and it gets through to your brain that you stop. I have to correct a bunch of all caps letters more often than I purposely use the Caps Lock key.
Touch typists don't rely on it, do they? Couldn't it be moved to a top row, and replaced with some innocuous key? At the moment, I could do with a key with the function "convert the highlighted text from upper to lower case" ...