Why is so complicated to remap Esc to CAPS LOCK in Vim?

23
votes

I saw the vim wiki tips and it says that in order to remap Esc to CAPS LOCK you have to edit the following windows code:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,01,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00

Is it possible to remap Esc to CAPS LOCK by only adding or modifying lines in the _vimrc?

7
windowsvimcapslockremap
paxdiablo, this is extremely common. Why? Because CAPS LOCK is the most useless key ever, but has prime real estate. It is a much handier location for, say, another ctrl key, or, if you've ever used Vim, the much-needed ESC key. – Jay
"Perhaps you should think about a non-modal editor" You obviously don't use Vim. – FlemishBeeCycle
One wouldn't have to throw out the keyboard if remapped to caps. – Jay
@Pierre: I'm one of the CAPS-LOCK to ESC mappers. I can confirm that working on a machine without the remapping is annoying for me. However it is still worth the productivity increase, as 99% of the time I work on my own machines (or SSH from my own machine) which has the remapping. – Wim Coenen
I use Uncap. I wrote it to conveniently map Caps Lock to Escape. It only requires downloading uncap.exe from the project page and double-clicking it. No installation, configuration or reboot is required. Thus it is easy to use it on a machine other than my own too. The mapping can be turned off easily by killing this program with the uncap -k command. Additionally, this project comes with detailed documentation on other ways of mapping keys on Windows, Linux and Mac OS/X. – Susam Pal

7 Answers

24
votes

I recommend that you use AutoHotkey for this.

You can do a per-application hotkey change:

SetTitleMatchMode,2
#IfWinActive,VIM
   CAPSLOCK::ESC
return

#IfWinActive
   CAPSLOCK::CTRL
return

This script, for example sets caps to escape in vim, and control everywhere else.

1
votes

There's no vim key identifier for the capslock key, so you have to do it with a scan code.

It would be like trying to map the ctrl key or the shift key to something - those keys don't do anything by themselves, they are key modifiers, so they can't be trapped the same way.

1
votes

The mapping has to be done at the OS level instead of vim, so the complication comes from the OS. For example, on my Ubuntu machine I have the following in ~/.Xmodmap:

! Esc on caps lock
remove Lock = Caps_Lock
keysym Caps_Lock = Escape

However, I don't think the REGEDIT script is so bad. It's kind of ugly, but it's only two lines!

1
votes

Also you can try this: SharpKeys. I swaped CapLock and Esc with it.

1
votes

You could also use Ctrl-C to escape (Available at least in vim). Which is what I normally use. I commonly swap control and capslock, though, and have done so through registry settings in windows and keyboard conf in ubuntu.

Edit: as @mMontu kindly notes, Ctrl-C is more brutal than Esc: As stated in this appropriate question,

vim isn't going to bother checking if you just wrote part of an abbreviation, and it isn't going to run the fancy auto commands your plugins have set up for every time you leave insert mode

I hadn't noticed because my vimming is not so advanced yet.

1
votes

Another alternative that worked well for me was to use the instructions found in this website

Essentially: Install Microsoft's Keyboard Layout Creator, then edit its source code to allow remapping of CAPS LOCK and create your own custom layout.

0
votes

Remap CAPSLOCK to ESC and CTRL on Windows

A very nice tool that I've already described in this answer gives you the possibility to remap CAPSLOCK to both

  1. to ESC (when pressed alone) and
  2. to CTRL (when pressed with other keys)

Just use this little piece of open source software by ililim.

You do not need Admin privileges for this and ESC and CTRL are still working as expected.

I use it to enjoy convenient CTRL + anything presses without hurting my pinky and to toggle modes in Vim that I use via ssh in MobaXterm. For installation just follow this description.