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Randy No Arms
Personal blog · randyrants.comprogramminggamesculture
Randy No Arms's personal blog at randyrants.com covers programming, games and culture. Since 2009, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 10 times, most often “SharpKeys is [ ] used to make certain keys on a keyboard act like other keys”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link this blog as the home of SharpKeys, a Windows utility for remapping keys via the registry. Comments describe using it to swap Caps Lock, Ctrl and Alt, but do not judge the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Randy No Arms' ongoing commentary on life, gaming, and the rest of the world
Most-linked posts?
- SharpKeys is [ ] used to make certain keys on a keyboard act like other keys3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-03-12
What Hacker News says?
While this is a workaround rather a solution, I use sharpkeys ( https://www.randyrants.com/category/sharpkeys/ ) to reprogram keys I don't use as much. Eg caps lock -> delete, num lock and scroll lock -> volume down/up, paragraph key -> play/pause (I'm on SE layout). Works very well for me.
Comment linking /category/sharpkeys/
on “Logitech MX Mechanical Keyboard”Submitted SharpKeys is [ ] used to make certain keys on a keyboard act like other keys as a story · 1 points
HN discussionGet a Japanese[1] keyboard and remap some keys around and you can accomplish this on Windows. You will need SharpKeys[2] and Autohotkey[3] at least in my set up. [1]: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61oeDlRN4QL... [2]: https://www.randyrants.com/category/sharpkeys/ [3]: https://www.autohotkey.com/
Comment linking /category/sharpkeys/
on “Kinto: Mac-style shortcut keys for Linux and Windows”Submitted What is an SDET? (2005) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThat Softonic site is probably totally unrelated to the original developer. This is the legit site: https://www.randyrants.com/software/ It's also on GitHub: https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys
Comment linking /software/
on “I Love Coding on Linux”Using Sharpkeys ( http://www.randyrants.com/2011/12/sharpkeys_35.html ) I remap Alt to be Ctrl, the Windows key to be Alt, and Ctrl to be the Windows key. Especially on laptop keyboards, the normal Alt keys are easily accessible to thumbs, and this eliminates the awkward hand curling caused by pressing the normal Ctrl with your pinky without needing a special keyboard. I also swap backspace and caps lock.
Comment linking /2011/12/sharpkeys_35.html
on “Towards a Vim-like Emacs”In gVim au WinLeave * set nocursorline nocursorcolumn au WinEnter * set cursorline cursorcolumn Everything http://www.voidtools.com/ for searching files fast in Windows ( it makes use of the USN journal so doesn't need reindexing) Reinteract http://www.reinteract.org/trac/ for hacking Python code. It can re-evaluate from where you made changes, so it doesn't run the whole program, just from where you changed somethi…
Comment linking /sharpkeys/
on “Ask HN: Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?”..:: Rebind CapsLock ::.. Windows users, use SmartKeys[1] to redefine CAPS LOCK to Left Control. I makes the frequent use of the control combinations a lot more bearable. ------------ [1] http://www.randyrants.com/2008/12/sharpkeys_30.html
Comment linking /2008/12/sharpkeys_30.html
on “Ergoemacs Keybindings”Nope, they're all 1980s and early 1990s models. Just the way I like it. I use them on Windows (very occasionally) and on Linux (mostly). I use old Apple mechanical keyboards on MacOS boxes. I miss having a Windows key, and I don't really need CapsLock, so I just remap CapsLock to Super and presto, 100% functionality. This is a built-in function in Windows -- it's just a Registry key -- so all you need is to set it.…
Comment linking /category/sharpkeys/
on “Ask HN: What keyboard do you recommend build+use?”Better than disabling capslock is to remap it to left control. In Windows, you can use SharpKeys [0] to update the registry to reconfigure behavior, or just use autohotkey (SharpKeys can't flip meanings, only overwrite one), although AHK won't work while you're logging into your user account on startup so SharpKeys is nicer. Not sure about Linux but I'm sure it's possible. Never having to reach all the way to the ac…
Comment linking /category/sharpkeys/
on “Caps Lock Behaviour Disabled in Gnome”