That Pesky Caps Lock

Tor Norbye politely requests that the caps lock key be removed and the control key put there instead. There’s one very good reason why that shouldn’t be done: Everyone (except old school UNIX geeks) is used to the control key being where it is. Moving the control key would seriously annoy people. If you’re one of the people who are used to control being next to ‘a’ then imagine the whole world being as annoyed as you every time they use a computer and find that control is in the “wrong” place. More importantly though, putting control beside ‘a’ isn’t a good place anyway. The little finger is the most difficult finger to control on the human hand and is used least commonly. In touch typing, currently the left little finger is positioned over ‘a’ and moves up for ‘q’ and ‘z’. If you’re British or Australian, ‘q’ and ‘z’ are incredibly uncommon letters (American’s customi_z_ed their language by putting a bunch of Zs in). Now think of the most common keyboard shortcuts used on computers these days (think Windows users, not emacs users):

• Control-Z
• Control-X
• Control-C
• Control-V
• Control-Y (Redo) Apart from the crazy idea of making control-Y the shortcut for redo (it’s typically control-shift-z on Mac which is arguably slightly better – read on for why), all those shortcuts are in the bottom left corner of the keyboard. More importantly though, they form the “control home row”. Try this experiment, put your left hand on the standard home row (of a US-English QWERTY keyboard) and then reach your little finger down to the control key. Now, if you’re a contortionist, you’ll have kept your other fingers on the home row but it’s actually easier to slide your entire hand down and just slightly to the left, letting your little finger lead. Your fingers then wind up on control, z, x, c and your thumb below the space bar. Since you’ve lead with your little finger it will get there just slightly ahead of the other fingers so that you hit control first followed rapidly by whichever of those keys you wanted. What this positioning means is that once you get used to control being where it is it’s actually quite fast even though it’s small mostly because it’s a more natural position for your hand. Note that Fitts law only applies to computer interfaces and not strictly to the real world (it does apply if all other factors are equal). Having said that, I prefer the use of the command key (positioned where the alt key is on windows keyboards or where the meta key is on Sun keyboards) because it allows my free thumb to turn under (the way it often does when playing piano) and my fingers can then drop down and hit the particular key I want. Alternatively though (and this is why I really like it) I can also stretch out my fingers and hit any key within about three quarters of the keyboard effortlessly (I have particularly long fingers). Also, because it’s the thumb that reaches for the meta key all the other fingers are left exactly where they are for touch typing. I can actually touch type with my thumb tucked under like that with only marginally lower speed. It is interesting to note however that if I plug a windows keyboard into my Mac, I am constantly reaching for the control key instead of the apple key. Similarly if I plug a Mac keyboard into a Windows box. It seems there is something about the feel of the keyboard that my fingers have learnt to identify with and use the appropriate modifier key. I’m yet to be able to identify exactly what that attribute is. Judging from that I’d say the most important aspect of speed when using meta keys is what you’re used to. Perhaps some scientific tests are required….