On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 02:13:31PM -1000, Joel Roth wrote:
> Having handled many of the issues relating to init system
> to the point of being able to release Devuan jessie beta,
> I wonder if Devuan community is ready to support action on
> other scourges of the linux on personal computer ecosystem.
>
> I am thinking specifically of three key mapping bugaboos:
>
> 1) CAPSLOCK key under console and X, should be mapped to Control
>

>    This mapping is compatible with most server
>    administrators preferences, prevents capslock-related mode
>    problems in vim.

Uh? What "server administrators"? The only semi platform I know that ever
did this was certain models of Chromebooks that replaced Caps Lock with an
useless "Search" key (for obvious marketing reasons), and I think even them
dropped that idea.

I see you don't program in C (macros), nor use autoconf, nor follow the
practice that in complex shell scripts constants are written in all caps.

Even keyboards with sharply reduced size, like N900, provide an equivalent
(press Shift twice rapidly).

While Caps Lock isn't strictly necessary, typing a long macro name with just
Shift is pretty tedious.

If you want some utterly useless keys, what about:
* F12 (somehow F11 got some use)
* SysRq/Scroll Lock/Pause
  + SysRq exists only as a part of Ctrl-Alt-SysRq, trivial to remap
  + Scroll Lock -- I think, it's a quirky copy of Ctrl-S/Ctrl-Q?
  + Pause -- no function I know since DOS
* NumLock: while there are two entrenched positions (the heretical use of
  numbers and right-thinking of arrows), I know of no one who ever switches
  between these two on runtime
* non-arrow/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keypad keys, especially 5
  + and even then, there's so few programs that distinguish between grey and
    keypad arrows/diagonals
* "multimedia" keys that I have on my keyboard
* the Windows key
* the Menu key (a good number of us reuse it for Compose)

>    If this default leads to angry bug reports, at least they will not be sent
>    in all caps ;-)

ᴘᴏʟɪᴛᴇ ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ ᴜꜱᴇ ꜱᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘꜱ ᴛᴏ ᴀᴠᴏɪᴅ ꜱʜᴏᴜᴛɪɴɢ :)

> 2) Terminate X via Ctrl-Alt-Backspace
>

>    Seems like an easy, useful, historic way to kill a malfunctioning X.

Isn't this set by default already? Not that I've used it for like ~10
years: properly malfunctioning X these days requires Ctrl-Alt-SysRq u b
or hard reboot (the latter tends to be provided if you wait a bit).

> 3) Disable Print key
>

>    All my uses have been unintentional. Does anyone use it deliberately?

Not me. It's stated intention is better done in Gimp's menu -- you usually
want to add further parameters to the capture.

> My other wishlist items are:
>
> 4) No display manager by default

Er, what? If you don't want X, don't install it in the first place! On
X-capable setups, an X terminal can do everything the text console does,
better. And if you really wanted you can even do this pixel-perfect.
The console is important for recovery reasons (boot-time issues, X drivers
not working) but there's no point in using it over X.

I was a rabid console-only user for many, many years in the past -- first
for legitimate reasons (X terminals used to suck, had no tabs, were slow,
etc) then out of inertia. I even have a few commits to drivers/tty/vt/vt.c.
Yet even I finally switched.

On the other hand, the systemd crowd wants to kill the console:
https://dvdhrm.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/killing-off-config_vt/
which proves it is important to keep.


Meow!
--
A tit a day keeps the vet away.