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IT'S INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY (daysoftheyear.com) 62

Posted by BeauHD from the history-101 dept.
bobstreo informs us that it's CAPS LOCK DAY and shares an excerpt about its history: Caps Lock Day first came to pass in the year 2000, when Derek Arnold of Iowa decided that he, like so many other internet users, had simply had enough of people using all caps to emphasize themselves on the web. So he created Caps Lock Day in the interest of poking fun at people who use this abomination of a typing style, and to finally bring some sanity to the net.

On mechanical typewriters, the Caps Lock key was first the Shift lock key. One of the earlier innovations in the use of typewriters saw a second character being added to each typebar. This caused the number of characters that a person was able to type to be doubled with the same number of keys being used. The second character was located above the first on each typebar's face, and the Shift key would cause the apparatus in its entirety to move, physically shifting the typebars position relative to the ribbon of inx. Just like in contemporary keyboards for computers today, the shifted position was used to create secondary characters and product capitals.

The invention of the Shift lock key was for the purpose of maintaining the shift operation indefinitely without continual effort. The typebars were mechanically locked in a shifted position, resulting in the upper character being typed when any key was pressed. This was also supposed to lower finger muscle pain caused by repetitive typing because it could be challenging to hold the shift down for more than two or three consecutive strokes prior to this. On mechanical typewriters, you would typically hit both Lock and Shift at the same time. After this, you press shift by itself in order to release the lock.
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IT'S INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY

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  • That reminds me of a story.
    Once there was a chat room and some noob was posting all in uppercase.
    Someone said: "Hey, press the caps lock button."
    The noob replied: "THANKS! THIS IS SO USEFUL, NOW I DON'T HAVE TO KEEP HOLDING SHIFT."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      The real question is whether Slashdot's moderation filters are turned down in anticipation.

      [Tests making this post in all caps.]

      No. They are not. *sigh*

      • The real question is whether Slashdot's moderation filters are turned down in anticipation.

        [Tests making this post in all caps.]

        No. They are not. *sigh*

        WHY WASN'T THE SYNOPSIS/SUMMARY IN ALL CAPS?

        THAT WOULD HAVE MADE MUCH MORE SENSE.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      For what is likely the origin of that story, look no further than bash.org [bash.org].

  • I can't remember if I ever used CapsLock for what it is. My past 3 laptops have had Windows registry changes to remap CapsLock key to act as a Left-Ctrl, which is far more useful, and less hard on my hands to contort to do the native Left-Ctrl button, especially at same time as shift.

    • Also useful (to some) is menu key - for when laptops have them assigned to some fn+nonsense or completely lack them

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Misagon ( 1135 )

        I have the Menu key mapped to the Compose key. I highly recommend it! [wikipedia.org]
        The Compose key is very handy for typing all sorts of characters ... that are not regular ASCII and can't be visible on Slashdot, so I can't show you properly, but, I'll just have to describe them:

        Most codes are combinations of two other characters. You use the key by pressing Compose and then those characters, in sequence.
        For instance "Compose < =" becomes the "less than or equal" symbol.
        It can be used to create ligatures for various l

    • It also makes a good candidate for a compose key, for typing all those extended characters like superscripts and mathematical symbols using easy to remember sequences instead of having to memorize alt-numbad code numbers or resort searching around in Character Map.

      Though, I have been coming around to right-alt instead, as a key I never use for anything else. Especially since I do occasionally find capslock useful, and mapping it to another key just gets confusing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        I mapped CapsLock to compose since my only "uses" of capslock were accidental and briefly confusing.

    • Re:Remap to something useful (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Friday October 23, 2020 @02:18AM (#60638720)
      CapsLock exists, or at least existed, for the benefit of Terry Pratchett when writing stories involving a certain anthropomorphic personification. Now that the embuggerance has got him, said personification can come collect the CapsLock key.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      I can't remember if I ever used CapsLock for what it is.

      You've never done drafting in CAD, then.

  • I FOR ONE SUPPORT INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY BY SHOUTING MY APPROVAL: international caps lock day is great!

    Filter error: Don't use so many caps because we don't get the joke.

  • The first Shift-Lock (Score:5, Informative)

    by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Thursday October 22, 2020 @07:23PM (#60637778)

    The first "Shift Lock" function wasn't actually a locking key that had been invented to make it easier to use a Shift Key.

    On the Remington No 2 -- the first typewriter with both upper and lower case -- it was actually a lever.
    Then there was an Upper Case key in the lower left corner, and a Lower Case key in the upper right corner of the keyboard that could be used to temporarily override the lever's setting.

    See it in action [youtube.com].

    • My old Olivetti Lettera 36c (electromechanical) has a linkage from the Shift key (with neighboring 'Lock' key) that lifts the type basket. Or rather, it's supposed to... the linkage seems to have departed the machine at some point. That machine's a work in progress.
      • Looking at it, my Selectric, WheelWriter, and very basic electronic Smith Corona all have the same key arrangement (with 'Lock' where the modern capslock would go). My parents' Brother word processing typewriter had an additional 'code' sequence for "Caps Lock". Past a certain point (obsolescence of the type basket, move to fully electronic controls), I imagine it was mostly a matter of convention.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I knew a guy who used CAPS LOCK instead of the shift key when typing, a bit like that typewriter. He said he found it easier to insert CAPS LOCK presses into his "stream", rather than reach for the shift key. So he would press it, type one uppercase character, and press it again to go back to lowercase.

  • *IN ALL CAPS*
    Hello, this is your Aunt Lavernia. Your Uncle Ed had a carbunckle removed last week, but they said it was just a cyst.
    Here is a funny picture of a cat.
    Aunt Lavernia

  • No reason specified.

  • Popped mine off with the screw driver and have never missed it.

  • A Brother portable I had, shift-lock was a little pinky-sized key above the Shift key. Press Shift down and pull back that little key, and it locks. Press Shift again to release.

    An Olivetti (I think?) at my aunt's, the shift key tilted and locked. Press again to release.

    I honestly can't remember what the Selectric had, despite having used them quite a bit. I just simply don't use it that much, the caps lock. No cents key, either -- you typed a c, then backspace, and a / Cheap bastards.

    And that was the

    • My Selectric II has the discrete shift and lock keys - they both appear to depress when you press Shift, but if you hold Lock while releasing, it does so. Press Shift again to release. Mine appears to have 'cent' on 6, though I can't say I've ever used it. Has the all-too-common cracked nylon main gear, so needs service before it comes back into use (somehow I find it more fun than the decidedly easier to work with WheelWriter)
  • CAPS LOCK ... I hate that button so much.

    • button

      Try to call it a key instead.

      • button

        Try to call it a key instead.

        That may be the case in the quaint colonial dialect of English that is spoken in the USA. In Britain, however, where we speak real original and correct English the two terms are interchangeable, even in government documentation. When it comes to English I'm afraid that British English is the definitive reference, not the US dialect.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      CAPS LOCK ... I hate that button so much.

      Then you should never do CAD.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cowdung ( 702933 )

      The C64 was all caps.

      Hmm.. not sure about that. I think you're confusing it with the Apple ][+ that was ALL CAPS.
      C64 came much later.

      • Maybe he's confusing the C64 with the CoCo2, which only had uppercase characters (and inverted characters which were supposed to represent lowercase, if I remember correctly?).

      • The Apple ][ was all caps. The Apple ][+ was...complicated. The font bitmaps in ROM had no lower case, and the keyboard out of the box did not support lower case. However, some software did use their own bitmaps in hi-res graphics to display lower case. There were also hardware add-ons that provided text mode with lower case. Others used the text mode with the ROM bitmaps, but used reverse video to show the uppercase letters (this was often used when the text was meant to be printed at some point--this

  • Thanks for remembering my day!

  • Capslock day was moved to honor the late great BILLY MAYS https://www.mentalfloss.com/ar... [mentalfloss.com]

  • Lameness filter (Score:3)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Thursday October 22, 2020 @08:42PM (#60638004) Homepage Journal

    Cue the lameness filter in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

  • There are scripts that don't have an upper-lower case distinction: the Arabic script (used for Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Panjabi in Pakistan, Pashto, and many other languages), Thaana (used for Dhivehi, the language of the Maldives), Georgian, Devanagari and related scripts of India and Bangladesh, and Chinese, among others. Not to mention Cuneiform, Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphics. And don't get me started about the hieroglyphics in Microsoft Office's Ribbon...

    Our system for writing numbers doesn't have an u

    • And more than half the world is also ignoring Christmas/Ramadan/festivus as well.
    • Lowercase is a modern invention. Really gets me when Bible thumpers say that there's a difference in the King James when it says god as compared to GOD. There was no lowercase in the days of the old and new testaments.

      Then again, these are the same nutbars who say that if the King James was good enough for Jesus it's good enough for them.

      And you wonder why so many evangelicals voted for Trump?

      • I think you mean 'lord' and 'LORD', which is obviously not based on upper/lower case in Hebrew (which has no such distinction), but is rather based on a lexical distinction in Hebrew. The reason for using this spelling distinction, rather than a lexical one, relates to the belief that the actual name of God should not be pronounced. So the capitalization distinction is a way of avoiding the actual name of God, and if you buy the need to avoid his name, makes perfect sense.

        As for someone saying that if the

    • To be fair though, when using chinese IME, if you press shift, you'll switch to typing English. So I guess shouting in chinese means you're typing in english? </joke>

      • Chinese use special characters to denote changes like this. For instance the only place tones are used in English really are for questions. Chinese is tonal, so there is a specific character and sound to denote a question, "ma" (å--). Likewise, there are characters for exclaimation, "a" (åS). But your joke was still funny.

        • Chinese use special characters to denote changes like this. For instance the only place tones are used in English really are for questions. Chinese is tonal, so there is a specific character and sound to denote a question, "ma" (å--). Likewise, there are characters for exclaimation, "a" (åS). But your joke was still funny.

          Dude... I know. I'm genetically han chinese. I currently live in Taiwan and I was born here.

    • Don't give them ideas about lowercase/uppercase emojis.

      "Lowercase smiley face? That's a baby smiley face!"

  • Also, this is the perfect time for me to ask. Does anyone else, when writing regex patterns to match capital letters only, for example [0-9A-Z_,], read it in their minds like "Match all characters zero through nine and A THROUGH Z!!... and also underscore and comma."?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by clovis ( 4684 )

      Also, this is the perfect time for me to ask. Does anyone else, when writing regex patterns to match capital letters only, for example [0-9A-Z_,], read it in their minds like "Match all characters zero through nine and A THROUGH Z!!... and also underscore and comma."?

      TL;DR

  • My usual reply when someone is sending a message/email/whatever in ALL CAPS:

    "You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a towel."

  • THANKS A LOT SLASHDOT FOR POSTING IT WHEN THE DAY WAS THREE QUARTERS OVER.


    filler filler filler filler filler filler filler filler and more filler filler filler filler filler filler filler

  • Is inx some gender neutral version of ink?

  • CAPSLOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL.

    No, not rule 34. Get your mind out of the gutter.

  • you insensitive clods.

  • Usually when I get a keyboard I rip that caps lock button right off. I only had one job where it p'ed off the computer guy. Phooey on him.
  • Inadvertent caps lock drives me crazy, so I disabled it on Windows 10 via a registry hack. You map the key's scan code to zeroes, reboot, and problem solved. Life is better now.

  • Given when I accidentally hit it, I'd remap the capslock to lower-case "a" .

    Also, someone needs to map CapsLock key to a macro which rAnDOMly cApiTaLizES leTTerS

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