Alternative Prefix#

There is a well-known trick to re-map <Caps> to <Esc> when tapped and <Ctrl> when held. This trick saves us from lifting our hands to reach the <Esc> or <Ctrl> key. But it do bring up another problem: <Caps-a> is too hard to press. To resolve this, we may further map <Caps-;> to <Ctrl-a>. This is a smart solution, because it can make use of a invalid key-combo and is very easy to press.

I use keyd do all these re-mapping. Below is my config:

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[ids]
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*
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[main]
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# Make <Caps> work as <Esc> when tapped and <Ctrl> when held.
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capslock = overload(capslock, esc)
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[capslock:C]
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# Map <Caps-;> behave like <Ctrl-a> (for GNU screen and tmux).
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; = C-a

Then in my tmux config, I have:

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unbind-key C-b
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set-option -g prefix C-a
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bind-key C-a send-prefix

which changes the prefix to <Ctrl-a> and can be triggered by <Caps-;>.