In sci.physics, New Cultural Paradigm
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wrote
HI
I NEED TO TURN OFF CAPLOCKS, BUT I CANNOT, IN SPITE OF MY BEST
ENDEAVOURS.
HOW DO I ACHIEVE THE AFOREMENTIONED GOAL OF THE TURNING OFF OF THE
CAPLOCKS?
Left side of the keyboard, usually below the Tab key.
If you're lucky there's an indicator light on the key
itself (some old keyboards have this feature). However,
most of the new keyboards have three indicator lights,
usually upper right. On my keyboard one is labeled "1",
one is labeled "A", and one is labeled with a down arrow
pointing at a wall. I'm not sure if all keyboards
have them in this order but it should be fairly obvious
which one's which.
1: "NumLock". If this indicator is on the right side of
the keyboard performs much like an accountant's 10-key [*];
pressing a digit key will enter a digit. If this indicator
is off the keys will behave much the same as the arrow
keys, scroll keys, and Ins and Del. The keycaps should be
fairly clear. Note that some programs may ignore NumLock.
There is a BIOS setting on some systems that will allow
this to default on or off at boot time. Why, I don't know,
though it may be a holdover from very old ALT-digit MS-DOS
support.
A: "CapsLock". If on, every keypress of the letter keys
will produce UPPER CASE letters, unless the shift key
is used. If off, the letter keys will produce lower case;
the shift key will produce the upper case. This is the
light that is most important to you.
Downarrow-wall: "ScrollLock". I'm not sure precisely
where this might be used in Linux (I don't use WinXP at
home); some programs and other operating systems might pay
some attention to it and freeze scrolling or some such.
It's not that important to your specific question.
Note that the shift keys are typically wider keys near the
bottom of your keyboard, to the left and right. In fact,
the left shift key should be just below the CapsLock key;
the right shift key is just below the Return or Enter key.
(Note that there are two Return/Enter keys; the one to
the far right is called the Keypad Enter key; the one most
often used is to the right of the middle of the keyboard.)
Either shift key will change the case of the letter keys.
(If you're lucky you'll be able to (or have already learned)
touch-typing; the home keys are ASDF and JKL;. The shift
keys are operated by one's pinkys.)
Number keys -- there are two sets; I'm now talking
about the ones below the function keys, which are the
topmost row of your keyboard -- have a digit (1, 2, 3,
etc.) and a symbol (!, @, #) immediately above that digit.
Caps Lock will *not* affect the number keys; however, the
shift keys will. So, for example, pressing and holding
shift-1 will produce an exclamation point, pressing and
holding shift-2 will produce an at sign, etc., on most
keyboards.
The Backspace key, located somewhere above the Enter key,
should erase the last character entered while editing
a file.
The function keys are labeled F1-F12 and are used for
various functions; programs need special programming to
properly read them. Some editors will respond with <F10>
or some such, when F10 is pressed. F1 should bring up a
help screen; that's a more or less established convention.
There may be "shortcut sequences" available; these should
be readily visible on your pulldown menus, and will depend
on which program gets the keypress(es).
Followups reset.
[*] it's flipped from a US touchtone phone dialpad; the
"1" is the bottom left on a computer keyboard.
I suspect many accountants today use the computer
keyboard, and a 10-key adding machine is getting
increasingly rare.
