[geeks] keyboard remapping in winxp

[Michael Parson]

On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 02:32:56PM -0500, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> For years I've run Windows 2000 with capslock remapped to be left
> control.
>
> I used a simple registry hack, and it worked in games and everything.
>
> *ALL* programs without exception saw capslock as control, and my
> little world was happy and productive.

Yup, did that years ago, a beautiful thing.

> Now I've moved to Windows XP, and something bizarre has happened. I
> mean besides the fact that I installed XP.
>
> I installed the same registry file, because it was supposed to work
> with XP, and now capslock is completely broken.
>
> On the desktop, capslock behaves like control.
>
> In applications, it seems to be random.
>
> In some applications, capslock behaves like control.
>
> In other applications, capslock behaves like capslock.
>
> Most maddening of all, in yet other applications capslock behaves like
> either control or capslock, depending on the context in which it is
> used. For example, in Oblivion it behaves like control when used in
> character control, but behaves like capslock when used for typing.
>
> What the hell has gone wrong?

I have no idea.  I have not had this problem, but I moved to a slightly
different solution a while back.

My only computer running windows is a Thinkpad from work.  They don't
have a Windows key on them, which some people seem to like, but, believe
it or not when running windows (and not playing games), that is a
useful key to have around.

I found KeyTweak:

http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/

My CapsLock is now control and the left control is now a Windows key.
It messes with everyone else that sits at my system, but it works great
for me.

When I have two boxes on my desk, the desktop tends to be a Unix/Linux
variant of some sort, so I use Syngery to drive both systems with one
keyboard/mouse.  The desktop acts as the Synergy server, the laptop as
a client, and Synergy honors whatever keyamppings I have on the server,
not bothering with what could wind up being a double-swap, since my
desktop's Caps is also mapped to Control.  IOW, it does what I want.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org