CrunchBang Linux

MekkaGodzilla

Member

From: Lyon, France

Registered: 2011-07-02

Posts: 18

[Solved] Use Caps Lock key as another Esc

Hello there,
Does anybody know the trick to use Caps Lock as another Escape key? It’s quite handy for vi.
Thanks,
Phil

Last edited by MekkaGodzilla (2011-07-05 14:57:27)

machinebacon

#! unstable

From: China

Registered: 2009-07-02

Posts: 6,826

Website

Re: [Solved] Use Caps Lock key as another Esc

Hi Phil,

this would be a task for xmodmap. You can use 'xev' in terminal to find out the code of Caps Lock. (keycode 66). Then make a copy of .Xmodmap for your user only:

xmodmap -pke > .Xmodmap 

Edit this file with an editor of your choice (vi)
You can now change the line

66 = Caps_Lock NoSymbol Caps_Lock

to

66 = Escape NoSymbol Caps_Lock

In this case you could have the real Caps Lock function if you press Alt + Caps Lock.
Save the file, and run

xmodmap .Xmodmap

at startup. Control if you did everything right with xev.

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MekkaGodzilla

Member

From: Lyon, France

Registered: 2011-07-02

Posts: 18

Re: [Solved] Use Caps Lock key as another Esc

Hi,
Thanks for the tutorial.
For some reason Caps Lock now works as an Escape key but kept ITS ORIGINAL FUNCTION AS WELL.
What to do?

machinebacon

#! unstable

From: China

Registered: 2009-07-02

Posts: 6,826

Website

Re: [Solved] Use Caps Lock key as another Esc

maybe

66 = Escape Escape Escape

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MekkaGodzilla

Member

From: Lyon, France

Registered: 2011-07-02

Posts: 18

Re: [Solved] Use Caps Lock key as another Esc

Same thing unfortunately…
But I found a way to kill the caps lock function when setting my keyboard layout in my autostart.sh file :

setxkbmap fr bepo -option ctrl:nocaps &

Replace fr bepo with your layout of choice of course.

So problem solved

machinebacon

#! unstable

From: China

Registered: 2009-07-02

Posts: 6,826

Website

Re: [Solved] Use Caps Lock key as another Esc

in case somebody cares:
add

clear Lock

as very first line in .Xmodmap, at least here it works anyway, solved is solved

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gurflob

New Member

Registered: 2014-11-23

Posts: 7

Re: [Solved] Use Caps Lock key as another Esc

If I use "clear Lock", will bringing caps lock back be as easy as removing that line and restarting? Or do I have to somehow add Lock back in?

ubuntulistener

New Member

Registered: 2009-05-10

Posts: 3

Re: [Solved] Use Caps Lock key as another Esc

in case someone comes looking for an answer:  in /etc/default/keyboard    change XKBOPTIONS=""   to    XKBOPTIONS="caps:swapescape"  ...save and reboot

credit where credit is due: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=82079