ketra

I literally use the caps lock key instead of using shift. I just don't like holding shift while typing lol

I use scroll lock as my voice chat cough button, which speaks to how fuckin useless it is for its stated purpose (also confuses the shit out of me every time I start excel, which actually uses it for the thing it's intended to do -- keeping column and row headers onscreen as you scroll the body of a spreadsheet around)

who even is this guy

it emulates a right click! ... sometimes

i've used the scroll lock button for exactly one thing:
when i was using windows (which i often avoid now), to force invoke a blue screen of death after enabling a certain debugging option

i am probably the only person to use the pause and skip songs button on my keyboard. i lose track of my spotify window often..

i do not use scroll lock or pause mostly because i don't really know what they do? but num lock i use to switch between typing numbers and windows' mousekeys, and then when you're using mousekeys that last button lets you right-click on things so it's real handy. you're right though caps lock should be a regular key size

Personally I never used the home/page keys until I got a keyboard with a 75% layout that placed them right next to the arrow keys, now I use them constantly. Not having to move the hand a big amount really made a difference for me in how often I thought to use them.

I also use the funny key often, it does a right click, which is nice when navigating a file explorer without using a mouse (im weird sometimes).

i've used some emulators where Pause actually pauses the emulation. that was neat.

In my keyboard layout experiments, i have a split keyboard with no arrow keys, and also a standalone numpad, and I had num lock usually off the so I could use it as arrow keys.

I bound the Pause key to pausing and resuming my music player. Might as well use a key that nothing else will ever touch.

Num Lock

windows has always reset that to off after an update for me, because fuck me I guess

home? end?

I use them almost anytime I'm writing/coding something, much better than spamming ctrl-⬅️/➡️

Numlock is useful bc it lets me swap to mousekeys instantly, should my mouse ever die.
The entire like, ins/del/home whatever island is also set to a lotta stuff in my art program since I roll my own keybinds in those. (The default keybinds are always made assuming you're okay with hunting and pecking based on broken pneumonics like B for Brush, F for Fill but only with shift) OR that you're using your left hand to operate the keyboard as you draw which I am NAWT.

The who even is this guy thing tho, uh. That's the "I hit this by accident instead of the FN key and now I'm mildly exasperated that I have to move my hand off the keyboard to left click and get rid of the context menu" key.

I use scroll lock sometimes. sometimes you gotta scroll down a long ass page and it's just easier that way

caps lock is cool because sometimes you need a key that mechanically locks itself pressed

Many colemak implementations rebind caps lock to backspace

Scroll Lock and Num Lock are unfortunately useful in Emacs because of course they are, it's one of the only programs that's actually old enough to remember how numpads worked in the before-times so when I'm using a keyboard that has a numpad it's actually kind of nice to have the layers of functionality for text traversal/manipulation. Also the menu key is good but I only get to use it for the both times a year I'm using some program on Linux will bother to react to me pressing it by opening a context menu that contains options I might care about.

the app key (that's the mystery guy) is Right Click But It's A Key and I guess it's pretty common in workflows for blind users? Scroll lock is a useful concept but hardly anyone uses terminal software anymore and I don't even know how much software actually supports it. Very rarely do I have occasion to turn num lock off but it does happen. It's even more likely if you're using a reduced footprint keyboard. Pause/Break is basically only useful in the sense it's a completely unused key you can bind things to, a TINY amount of software uses it for its stated purpose.

Caps lock can go to hell. I use the caps lock key a lot, but never for the function of toggling between upper and lower case, always for some other thing bound to it as a large key in a conspicuous place, and it fucking up my text is just an unwelcome side effect.

Oh hey I (kinda) use some of those keys! I have Insert bound as my compose key (because it inserts new characters, get it?), and Scroll Lock bound to opening a terminal (it opens Yakuake, the kind of terminal which scrolls down from the top of the screen, so, Scroll Lock lets a thing scroll, get it??). Home/End are very useful when I'm writing text or code outside of Vim. PageUp/Down are helpful when using a web browser without a mouse; they scroll a good amount by themselves, and can switch to other tabs when holding Ctrl. Don't have any use for Caps Lock, Num Lock, Pause, or Menu, though.

numlock is nice in excel; I will toggle between to use the arrow functions to navigate and then swap to enter numbers (side note: Secret Trick is holding shift to temporarily toggle between them--you can hold shift to get the arrows while locked or numbers while unlocked)

I am slowly becoming heavily dependent on home/end; a critical method of navigating command lines and extremely convenient in composotion software.

i love the rightclick key and will fight to defend it. while we're complaining though, do we really need TWO shifts, ctrls, and alts?

fun fact: i switched to ubuntu and now the scroll lock key doesn't turn on the light