How to Detect Caps Lock in a Vimrc Function

9
votes

When editing code in Vim, I will often use caps lock when writing stuff in ALL CAPS. However, I often forget to turn off caps lock when I'm done with the capitalized portion. This causes no end of pain (since, ie, j moves down, but J joins the current line with the line below).

Usually, I want to turn off caps lock when I exit insert mode. How can I add something to my .vimrc so that it will either turn caps lock off when exiting insert mode? Alternately, how could I add something to my .vimrc so that it will alert me (status line? beep? any alert is fine) if I have caps lock on when exiting insert mode?

Thanks!

1
vimcapslock
You can use autocmd InsertLeave to perform an action when leaving insert mode but I don't think there's a way to turn caps on/off from within vim since it's a modifier key (you might be able to do it in an OS specific way though). – Benj
Why wouldn't you take the habit of typing normally and then change the case of your text? – romainl
This will help. – Pavan Manjunath
i would too recommend using for example nnoremap <C-u> gUiw and inoremap <C-u> <esc>gUiwea to uppercase single words; additionally i use autocomplpop-plugin so any word i already typed is suggested in the way i typed it. – epsilonhalbe
@epsilonhalbe (+romainl): Yeah, I have something similar, but I still find using caps lock more convenient and faster aside from the issue described here. – Sam King

1 Answers

6
votes

Like all other applications, Vim / GVIM sits atop the terminal / window manager abstractions, and therefore has no direct access to the underlying raw keyboard functions. So getting Caps Lock information would involve messy and platform-specific hacks.

Instead, I would advise you to use Vim features to "emulate" Caps Lock within Vim, as this doesn't have the problems you've mentioned. Have a look at the article Insert-mode only Caps Lock, which explains this in detail.