Thursday, August 14, 2008

Gnome Caps Lock, Insert Keys

Some time back I discussed disabling the caps lock and insert keys in gnome. In Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) the caps lock suggestion I made stopped functioning. Here's the new fix:
#! /bin/sh
# Kills the stoopid caps lock and insert keys.

file=/tmp/capsLockDisabled

if test ! -e $file ; then
        /usr/bin/xmodmap -e "keycode 66 = "
        /usr/bin/xmodmap -e "keycode 106 = "
        /bin/date >$file
fi
I'm still amazed every time a new release of Gnome comes out and they still don't give the user a way of getting rid of these. As a system staffer in the Ohio State CIS department (Frank Adelstein? Frodo?) once said: "The caps lock key shouldn't be right next to keys that are used all the time. It should be somewhere off in the next room." Ok, that was a paraphrase, not really a quote, and I don't remember who I'm paraphrasing. Anyhow, the above script does it. I call the script from my .cshrc. Those of you who use bash (yuck) would put it in your .profile.

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