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0 pointswallacoloo10y ago0 comments

I respectfully disagree. In normal typing, I don't consider a capital "I" to be significantly more taxing than a lowercase "i". Relatedly, I think there's a reason that I've never heard an argument about why we should prefer square brackets over parentheses (square brackets require no shift while parentheses do).

Right off the bat, I notice that when I'm quoting something using double quotes or placing something in parentheses or curly braces, I don't even have to think about pressing shift. I type them just as quickly as any other punctuation. So I don't think there's much validity to this argument based solely on keystrokes.

0 pointswallacoloo10y ago0 comments

0 comments

5 comments · 3 top-level

krylon10y ago· 1 in thread

> square brackets require no shift while parentheses do

On a German keyboard, parentheses require a shift, but to get square brackets, one needs to hit AltGr (or "Option" on a Mac keyboard) which quickly gets annoying if one has to do it a lot.

Except for that, I agree with you.

therein10y ago

But I thought "We're all living in Amerika, Amerika ist wunderbar"...

bufordsharkley10y ago· 1 in thread

I'm an outlier-- I hate chording so much that I use Caps Lock instead of the Shift key. (I'm in the company of the world's fastest typer...)

I haven't gone so far as to hack the system to allow Caps Lock to enable the colon and other punctuation, but I've long considered it.

...So for me, two periods is a million times better than a colon.

bufordsharkley10y ago

I get downvoted every time I mention this, but I'll live with it-- I want to recruit people to typing with caps lock (especially vim users, already used to modal typing).

wtbob10y ago

> Relatedly, I think there's a reason that I've never heard an argument about why we should prefer square brackets over parentheses (square brackets require no shift while parentheses do).

FWIW, I switch parens and square brackets for exactly that reason. It'd be great if distros offered this as an option, but I know my way around xkb enough to do this much.

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