The Caps Lock key is mostly just an annoyance. But there are ways to make it more useful. I recently found a very nice script by Gustavo Duarte called How Row Computing which maps Caps Lock as a modifier key that lets you navigate in text Vim-style using H, J, K and L. This is very handy as you don’t have to move your hand back and forth to the cursor keys while typing. It also maps Home, End, Page Up, Page Down and Del to easy accessible keys from the home row.

The script required remapping the Caps Lock key to another key in the Windows registry though, so I started improving it a bit. I added some new functionality and customized it to my preferences. I also added another very handy function that lets you drag anywhere on a window to move it while holding Caps Lock, the way you can do while holding the Alt key on Linux. I got that feature from an article at How-to-geek, changed the key from Alt to CapsLock and added it to the script. Very handy indeed!

Below you can see the default mappings for the script, although it’s easy to change it if you like:

You have access to all the common keys on the right side of the keyboard (Cursors, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, Ins, Del) from your home row, which is very handy when typing! Common commands like cut-copy-paste, undo-redo, backspace-delete are also very easy to access giving less hand movement. You can still toggle caps lock if you need to by pressing the Windows Key + Caps Lock.

To use the script:

1. Download and install Autohotkey.
2. Download the script.
3. Put the script (or a shortcut to it) in the Startup folder so that it runs each time you start you computer.

I chose keys that are consistently placed for QWERTY layouts, some keys might have to be changed for QWERTZ or AZERTY. Let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions or comments.

Update: If you like the regular cursor layout I made another version of the script:

The cursor key layout should be more familiar than the Vim-style layout to most people, and much easier to learn.

Original keyboard layout graphic by Simon Kaupinmäki

Pyxel Edit is now in public beta and you can get it at http://pyxeledit.com/

Pyxel Edit is a drawing application aimed at making pixel art. It has features to make it faster and easier to make low resolution art like tile sets for games. It’s made using Adobe Air, runs on Windows and Mac, and is currently in beta.

What’s special about it?
You can draw freeform like in any other program, you can also draw and place tiles. If you have multiple instances of a tile and edit one, they all update. This still works if some of the instances are flipped or rotated. This is really nice when making tile sets, as you can instantly see how all the tiles work together as you draw them. This feature is inspired by the awesome Pixothello and Cosmigo Pro Motion, but taken one step further.

Tileset importing
Pyxel Edit can import images of tilesets or mockups and identify all the unique tiles automatically, which is great for editing and rearranging old tile sets or doing edits of mockups.

Tilemap exporting
The tilemap can be exported to XML or plain text, making Pyxel Edit also useable as a level editor. Just export the tileset image and the tilemap, and you are ready to load it into your game!

How much does it cost?
The beta is free. In the future there might be a free and a paid “pro” version.

Future features
In addition to adding lots of small features, new tools, better menus and polishing the UI, animation support is planned.

Follow @PyxelEdit for updates.

Video

Sos at Ludum Dare arranged nanoLD - make a game in 48 minutes. I got the theme RTS and made this. (the theme was random each time you loaded the page but I didn’t realise that until afterwards)
I spent an extra couple of minutes fixing a few bugs afterwards, so maybe 55 minutes in total.

48 min RTS