Is there a really good use case for the Caps Lock key? Was there ever a good reason to have it on a computer keyboard? The only use case I can think of is when using a typewriter and wanting to have titles or section headers appear in a different “typeface”, so you use ALL CAPS to poorly emulate true small caps. So really it's a vestige left over from a long-obsolete technology.So what can you do about it? Well, turn it off for starters. You can find several ways to disable the caps lock key out there. My preference is by using AutoHotKey. I use this for other keyboard re-mapping functions, so adding another line to my script is easy. Here's the code:
Translated into English: “whenever I press the Caps Lock key, regardless of if any modifier keys are held down, turn off Caps Lock”.
*CapsLock::SetCapslockState AlwaysOff
Another reason to not disable the key entirely at the system level is because you can use this key for fun and profit—or as another useful modifier key. Stay tuned for the post on how to do that.
Sure, Caps Lock can be useful. Maybe not way up there in that stratified VC air, but us lowly C / Unix programmers down in the mines do use it from time to time. Mostly for those charmingly long ALL_CAPITALS_WITH_UNDERSCORES constants.
It's probably a rough crowd for this, but some of us make due with ALL TEXT email, and may be seen to use an all caps word here and there.
So please don't take away my caps lock key! Remap it, sure; the Kinesis I'm typing on has many of the modifiers swapped around to match how I type, but I can't see having the keyboard real estate to abandon such a prime spot.