Tech Support > Operating Systems > Linux / Variants > Shift so it doesn't cancel CapsLock
Shift so it doesn't cancel CapsLock
Posted by Peter Schaffter on February 29th, 2004


Please don't flame me on this with personal opinions. I'm posting
for a friend who currently can't access colm.

Running XF86-4, Debian Sarge, with

Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"

can one configure CapsLock and Shift so that when CapsLock is on,
Shift *does not* reverse the sense of CapsLock for alphabetic
characters?

There must be a thousand posts out there from people with the
opposite requirement, but none that address themselves to my
problem.

The following lines appear in /etc/X11/xkb/rules/xfree86.lst:

---
caps:internal uses internal capitalization. Shift cancels Caps.
caps:internal_nocancel uses internal capitalization. Shift doesn't cancel Caps.
caps:shift acts as Shift with locking. Shift cancels Caps.
caps:shift_nocancel acts as Shift with locking. Shift doesn't cancel Caps.
---

This would seem to indicate that an XF86Config-4 file with

Option "XkbOptions" "caps:internal_nocancel"

ought to do the trick. However, X complains that there's no file
"caps."

FWIW -- KDE 3.x has a keyboard layout GUI thingy (yuk!) that offers
versions of "shift doesn't cancel caps lock" that mirror the four
"caps:..." lines above. This suggests to me that somewhere,
someone must know how to configure X so that the options become
available.

All help welcome.

--
Peter Schaffter