unity-design team mailing list archive

[Alan Bell <alanbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Caps lock is an interesting choice of key, it is used as the Orca 
modifier key when Orca is in laptop mode (when it thinks you have a 
keyboard without separate keypad) so I wouldn't want to see the caps 
lock key set as the default without the interaction with Orca being 
carefully tested. That said, I think it is a decent key to repurpose and 
making the HUD key switchable would allow people to choose their own 
compromises and keep using the HUD rather than turn it off altogether 
because it steals alt from virtual machine guests etc. What might be of 
interest is how Orca uses the capslock key but still has a key sequence 
that allows you to access the capslock function if you want it:

http://library.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/howto_toggling_caps_lock.html.en

One other point, I believe the Google Chromebook lacks a capslock key 
altogether. Dunno how this impacts the argument one way or another, but 
I thought I would chuck it in as something to ponder.

Alan.

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