caps2esc

Transforming the most useless key ever in the most useful one. _{For vi/Vim/NeoVim addicts at least.}

What is it?

Put what's useless in its place _{By moving the CAPSLOCK function to the far ESC location}
Make what's useful comfortably present, just below your Pinky _{By moving both ESC and CTRL functions to the CAPSLOCK location}

Why?!

Because CAPSLOCK is just "right there" and making it CTRL when key-chording and ESC when pressed alone is quite handy, specially in vi.

Dependencies

Interception Tools

Building

$ git clone https://gitlab.com/interception/linux/plugins/caps2esc.git
$ cd caps2esc
$ cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
$ cmake --build build

Execution

caps2esc - transforming the most useless key ever in the most useful one

usage: caps2esc [-h | [-m mode] [-t delay]]

options:
    -h        show this message and exit
    -t        delay used for key sequences (default: 20000 microseconds)
    -m mode   0: default
                 - caps as esc/ctrl
                 - esc as caps
              1: minimal
                 - caps as esc/ctrl
              2: useful on 60% layouts
                 - caps as esc/ctrl
                 - esc as grave accent
                 - grave accent as caps

caps2esc is an Interception Tools plugin. A suggested udevmon job configuration (check the Interception Tools README for alternatives) is:

- JOB: intercept -g $DEVNODE | caps2esc | uinput -d $DEVNODE
  DEVICE:
    EVENTS:
      EV_KEY: [KEY_CAPSLOCK, KEY_ESC]

For more information about the Interception Tools, check the project's website.

Mouse/Touchpad Support

After Interception Tools 0.3.2, caps2esc can observe (or replace) mouse events. An example configuration taken from my laptop:

SHELL: [zsh, -c]
---
- CMD: mux -c caps2esc
- JOB: mux -i caps2esc | caps2esc | uinput -c /etc/interception/keyboard.yaml
- JOB: intercept -g $DEVNODE | mux -o caps2esc
  DEVICE:
    LINK: /dev/input/by-path/platform-i8042-serio-0-event-kbd
- JOB: intercept $DEVNODE | mux -o caps2esc
  DEVICE:
    LINK: /dev/input/by-path/platform-i8042-serio-4-event-mouse

For more information on the topic, check the Interception Tools README about usage of the mux tool and hybrid virtual device configurations.

Installation

Archlinux

It's available from community:

$ pacman -S interception-caps2esc

Void Linux

$ xbps-install -S caps2esc

Ubuntu (independent package)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deafmute/interception
sudo apt install interception-caps2esc

_{For debian and other derivatives you can download directly at https://launchpad.net/~deafmute/+archive/ubuntu/interception/+packages.}

Caveats

As always, there's always a caveat:

intercept -g will "grab" the detected devices for exclusive access.
If you tweak your key repeat settings, check whether they get reset. Please check this report about the resolution.

History

I can't recall when I started using CAPSLOCK as both ESC and CTRL but it has been quite some time already. It started when I was on OS X where it was quite easy to achieve using the Karabiner, which already provides an option to turn CTRL into ESC/CTRL (which can be coupled with OS X system settings that turn CAPSLOCK into CTRL).

Moving on, permanently making Linux my home, I searched and tweaked a similar solution based on xmodmap and xcape:

https://github.com/alexandre/caps2esc

It's a simple solution but with many annoying drawbacks I couldn't stand in the end:

It resets any time a device change happens (bluetooth, usb, any) or the laptop lid is closed or when logging off and needs to be re-executed.
It depends on X. Doesn't work on TTY (bare terminal based machine, CTRL-ALT F2, etc).

Meanwhile on Windows land, I had a definitive solution based on my Interception library that always works perfectly, no hiccups.

It made me envy enough, so I ported the Windows Interception caps2esc sample to Linux based upon the Interception Tools.

License

osamuaoki / interception-caps2esc