The UNIX layout is also my favorite layout by a mile.
The backspace and control keys position is so much more natural, I don't understand why it didn't become the default layout.
> There’s a better place to put it, right on a large, easy-to-press key that you rarely use: Caps Lock. A few keyboards throughout the years have gotten this right, like Apple’s Standard Keyboard for the Macintosh II and SE:
Revising caps lock makes perfect sense since it's obsolete.
The backspace key has been at the location it is (far right of number row) for well over 100 years. Indeed its placement preceeds the existence of the Return key, as prior to the IBM Electric (1935) and similar, typewriters had a manual carriage return bar. That's a century of keyboards and muscle memory that you're trying to undo.
As a touch typist, any keyboard that moved the backspace key would be awful. Still better than the ergonomic nightmare that is the ISO european keyboard.
I've been remapping caps lock to backspace for more than a decade now, I have backspace mapped to (forward) delete. This was due to the only repetitive stress injury a keyboard has ever given me, which was strain in the outside of my right wrist from the frequency with which I would go after the backspace key.
Also, aesthetically, I like the fact that backspace is to the left and delete to the right, the directions in which the command acts. But mainly, I'm not an especially accurate typist, and I change my mind a lot, a home row backspace is a godsend.
This remap leads to some pretty comical results when I find myself using a board which doesn't have them, the first time I make a mistake it STAYS ANd I get something like that, a run of capital letters and then lowercase as I instinctively hit caps lock again to try and delete them.
At one point Apple did make one keyboard with the CTRL key in the correct place!
The CAPSLOCK key is, for me, the most useless key.
Who uses it and why! LOL
I should really remap CAPSLOCK be CTRL on my Mac, but I dont use CTRL that often and prefer just to roll with the stock defaults most of the time.
EDIT: I quickly Binged the Mac keyboard I was thinking of, and got this result:
* https://controlaltbackspace.org/ctrl/
> There’s a better place to put it, right on a large, easy-to-press key that you rarely use: Caps Lock. A few keyboards throughout the years have gotten this right, like Apple’s Standard Keyboard for the Macintosh II and SE: