For years, I have been on a quest. An understated personal mission. A battle against one key. Since the very first ErgoDox EZ default layout, we proudly omitted the Caps Lock key. There was no Caps Lock on that layout, nor on any other default layout in the years that followed. "Who needs it," I thought. "Such a shouty key."
Today, that CHANGES. I have seen the LIGHT.
It's not Caps Lock: Introducing Caps WORD.
When we said goodbye to the Oryx key, it freed up a position on layer 0 of the default layout across all of our keyboards. This is where Caps WORD now lives.
Hit it once, and the next word you type will be in CAPS. But only that one word. This is great for programmers who need to type names for constants, and for anyone who uses the odd acronym here and there.
Like all of our keycodes, it is completely optional. If you already have a layout you've customized for your board, you can add Caps WORD anywhere in your layout.
Caps WORD Caveats
- For now, Caps WORD takes up a whole key — you can’t use it as part of a multi-function key. This may change in the future.
- Conversely, Caps WORD will also not capitalize letters or symbols that are sent as part of a multi-function key. This is due to some complex parts of our underlying QMK firmware and how these two features interact. This is also something we may try to improve in the future.
- Finally, Caps WORD will not work with some international characters or layouts. This is not likely to change in Oryx, but you can add support for your language by editing your QMK layout files directly.
You can read more about Caps WORD in the QMK firmware documentation.
Thank YOU for READING.
