CTRL2CAPS

Ctrl / Caps-Lock Key Swapper

As of: Kermit 95 2.0
PC users who are accustomed to terminal keyboards often want the PC keyboard to have the Ctrl key where the Caps Lock key is, and Esc where Accent Grave is. CTRL2CAPS.VXD can take care of this for you in Windows 95, 98, or ME (but not NT, 2000, or XP), but you should know there are alternatives, including:

  1. IBM-like keyboards from Unicomp, Avant, LinuXcare, and elsewhere that specialize in swapping Ctrl and Caps Lock, Esc and Grave/Tilde, and in some cases allowing for user customizations. The advantage of doing it in the keyboard itself rather than in the software means you don't have to change the software every time you upgrade or switch operating systems.

  2. Digital Part number LK-461-A2 from Digital Parts Source 1-800-225-5385, $75.00 USD: a PC-compatible version of the DEC VT 220/320/420/520 keyboard that has 20 function keys and Ctrl left of the 'A'. (Digital Equipment Corporation has since been bought by Compaq Computer Corporation, which was then bought by Hewlett Packard; it is not known if they still sell this part, but a search of the Compaq website in early 2002 for "LK-461" turned up 60 references.)

  3. Look in your Control Panel -- it might include options for key swapping.

CTRL2CAPS

CTRL2CAPS.VXD is device driver that swaps the Caps Lock and left Ctrl keys on the PC keyboard in Windows 95/98/ME, for use by those who prefer to have the Control key just left of the A key, rather than its present placement on PC keyboards, which is not handy for touch typists. (See the URL at the bottom of this file for a Windows NT version, as well as other utilities for Windows 95 and NT.)

Previous versions of CTRL2CAP removed the Caps Lock function from the keyboard completely. The version that is included with Kermit 1.1.17 and later puts the Caps Lock function on the left Ctrl key (a) in case you want to use it, and (b) so there will be no conflict with PCTERM keyboard mode, which also was added in K95 1.1.17, and which needs a Caps Lock key.

INSTALLATION

Use a text editor to add a couple lines to your SYSTEM.INI file (in Windows 95/98 this is in the C:\WINDOWS directory). First, to enable CTRl2CAP, put: 

  DEVICE=path/CTRL2CAP.VXD

in the [Enhanced] (or [386enh]) section, where path is the KEYMAPS subdirectory of your Kermit 95 directory. Note: We recommend you use the copy in the Kermit 95 KEYMAPS directory, since this is the one that it patched automatically (in case corrections are needed) when new releases of K95 are installed. If you copy CTRL2CAP.VXD to another directory and refer to the copy in SYSTEM.INI, then if a patch is later applied to the copy in your K95\KEYMAPS directory, it will not be reflected in the version you are actually running.

Second: CTRL2CAP also allows Escape/Accent-Grave switching. If you want these keys swapped, also put: 

  [Ctrl2cap]
  Escape=TRUE

in the SYSTEM.INI file.

CREDITS

CTRL2CAP was written and contributed by:

Dr. Mark Russinovich
Department of Computer and Information Science
University of Oregon
Eugene OR 97403
USA

Email: markr@numega.com
Web: http://www.sysinternals.com/

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