why do people always use the superkey as the modkey for their shortcuts? you have to stretch your pinky, index, or thumb akwardly to reach it, when the alt key is bearly used as a shortcut by default in most programs, and is super easy to reach with either of your thumbs.
3 years ago 路 馃憤 gwenprime
I bound it to Super mostly because it's an unused key otherwise, and as I don't use a mouse or touchpad I always have a free hand hovering near it. 路 3 years ago
@clair_de_soleil Sure. Even though I've been slowly replacing my most-used programs with CLI alternatives, I don't see replacing Firefox any time soon, for one. "Alt" is definitely bound to the menu in that program.
I think the meta key is the default because it's not really used for anything else and so is least likely to conflict with anyone's workflow. And people generally tend to leave defaults alone unless those defaults are somehow irritating enough to bother changing.
I've not changed the default myself because I've never felt like I've had to contort my hand or wrist to hit it. Might be a hand size thing, a layout thing, or a bit of both. 馃し 路 3 years ago
also, has anybody ever been able to remap the fn key? it'd make a great modkey, accept its tied to the hardware itself, and doesn't use a keycode or anything to change it within the OS. 路 3 years ago
@lykso really? guess its just me, but i've really only been annoyed by this in few programs like zoom. 9/10 times shortcuts tend to be using ctrl, and those rare times their not i can easily change it. 路 3 years ago
Agree with @moddedbear. Rmapping caps lock to ctrl is pretty common among Emacs fans. When was the last time you used that key intentionally? 路 3 years ago
Not that I do it this way, but if we're talking about alternate modkeys I think caps lock is worth bringing up. For how prominently it's placed on most keyboards it hardly ever gets used. 路 3 years ago
What sort of userland have you got set up where Alt isn't bound to shortcuts in most programs? It's true of many CLI/TUI programs, I suppose, but most of the GUI programs I use seem to use Alt for things like highlighting menu items. 路 3 years ago