Caps lock versus Backspace
One key feature of Colemak is that it does away with Caps Lock, replacing it with the Backspace key.
Until now I’ve been using a slightly tweaked, British version of Colemak, with the punctuation and symbols in their UK rather than their US positions, and I haven’t done away with Caps Lock. The reason for this is that I actually like Caps Lock. There are times when you need it — for instance, when you are typing abbreviations, or in case sensitive programming languages where you get the identifiers in all upper case, or when you really think that something (such as Colemak) should be SHOUTED FROM THE ROOFTOPS.
However, since switching to Colemak-with-Caps-Lock I’ve been getting rather irritated with the conventional position of the Backspace key. It is quite a stretch away from the home keys for your right hand, and when you have a good typing pace up, it can really interrupt the flow while you move your hand back and fro. It gets particularly irritating when your hands return to the wrong keys and you make another mistake immediately after correcting the last one.
It is also pretty tiring, and it was making my right wrist sore.
Personally, I think the best solution is to swap Caps Lock and Backspace rather than having two Backspace keys as the “official” Colemak spec recommends. So last night I decided to take the plunge and swap the two using KMapper.
It’s a bit confusing at first — at first I kept pressing Tab instead of Backspace, and after about half an hour or so I still do that occasionally, but I am gradually getting used to it, and it makes a pretty big difference in terms of comfort.
Unfortunately, due to the insanities of Windows, the registry re-mapping affects all keyboard layouts, so if someone who insists on using qwerty comes onto the computer, it could confuse them a bit. Having said that, you can set it on a per-user basis, so it isn’t too bad in that respect.
So it seems to me that replacing Caps Lock with Backspace is a pretty smart decision. If you can’t live without Caps Lock, however, the best approach is to swap the two.
