Config

Author: kidd

2024-01-09-caps-is-esc-is-ctrl.md

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+---
+title: caps lock is escape is ctrl
+categories: [macos]
+---
+
+Still configuring my "new" Macbook...
+
+I'm trying to combine using a 60% keyboard, which works pretty well for its price along with my shortcut maximalism.
+
+This leads to some collisions that I never experimented, but I'm kind of solving them with 2 things:
+
+# Karabiner
+
+Allows you to remap keys PER DEVICE. That's super cool, as different
+keyboards have different layouts, so some remaps only make sense in a single keyboard.
+
+I also imported a script from [this blog](https://medium.com/@pechyonkin/how-to-map-capslock-to-control-and-escape-on-mac-60523a64022b) that maps caps lock to escape when pressed alone, and to ctrl when pressed in "chord".
+
+That's great, because the major drawback of the 60% kbd IMO is the key
+to the left of "1", which is `esc, backtick, and tilde`.  The way to
+make one or the other involve a tiny `fn` key in the keyboard and
+maybe `shift` also.
+
+All in all, between the usual `imap jk <esc>` and this karabiner config, I'm quite satisfied with the keyboard usage.
+
+# Rectangle
+
+To manage windows and sizes and screens, `rectangle` is a nice free app that provides a few useful shortcuts.
+
+# Hammerspoon & Ratspoon
+
+The ultimate configuration layer is Hammerspoon, which is some sort of
+AutoIt for MacOS, and it's configured in Lua.
+
+The same way I created [ratemu](https://github.com/kidd/ratemu) about
+15 years ago, now it's time to create ratemu.lua.
+
+I'm taking https://github.com/jorenvo/ratspoon as a base, and my plan
+is to only add things on a need basis.