#pckeyboardhack

Even without Internet Kooks and YouTube comments, Caps Lock is awful. If you are a Vim user like me, it is the bane of your existence.

Fortunately, we don't have to live with it. Mac OS X allows us to remap the modifier keys (System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys):

Now that I know that I can get rid of my Caps Lock, there are two options for what to replace it with.

Control

Mac OS X can directly map the Control Key over Caps Lock. The appeal of this one is the toggles: tmux uses Control-A, and Vim uses Control-W. I spend a lot of time stretching my hand around the keyboard when navigating normally, and moving the Control button up to the home row is a lot less stressful on my hands.

Escape

Using a nice tool called PCKeyboardHack allows me to map the escape key to Caps Lock. As a Vim user, this is a very commonly used key; I pound this guy relentlessly day in and day out, and it actually saves me a lot of motion because the keyboard I use (The Kinesis Freestyle, also incredible) has an oddly positioned escape key.

Which is Better?

I imagine if you are a Windows or Linux user, Control gets used a lot more than on the Mac. I'm unfortunately still on the fence on which I like better, though I'm trying out Control right now.

Как известно PCKeyboardHack перестал работать на новой Mountain Lion 10.8 а автор не особо торопится выпускать новую версию но эта проблема решается изменением одного байта в конфигах PCKeyboardHack: