Re^2: The most useless key on my keyboard is:

They don't appear to do anything in any of the apps I use.

Exactly. This leaves it free as a modifier for custom mapping. Under Windows, there are some defaults (Win-L locks the display, Win-D shows the desktop, etc.), and there are third-party apps that let you map it to do more. I use one called WinKey (which isn't made anymore, sadly). When I want my browser up, Win-W. Win-P begins an Eclipse/EPIC session with a blank .pl file. And so on.

In Linux and BSD, they key is assignable to window-manager tasks (as the modifier 'Hyper' in most cases). On my linux devel box, Win-D starts my development environment (Eclipse/EPIC, Devel::ptkdb, and a couple other tools).

On the Mac, it's basically the PC world's "control" key, so almost all apps use it.

But, on any PC-based platform (damn it, I can't say 'x86-based' anymore!), it's one of the most useful keys because you can make it do whatever you want.

ScrollLock, though... what a pointless key. (Keyboard holy war! Yay!)

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Comment on Re^2: The most useless key on my keyboard is:

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Re^3: The most useless key on my keyboard is: by Perl Mouse (Chaplain) on Nov 17, 2005 at 10:14 UTC
ScrollLock, though... what a pointless key. I do use scrolllock. Not because it does something in an application - but because I've some hardware that uses it: my switchbox. `<<ScrollLock>><<ScrollLock>><<Page-Up>>` goes to the next active computer, `<<ScrollLock>><<ScrollLock>><<Page-Down>>` goes to the previous active computer. There are a few more commands using scrolllock, but I can never remember them. `Perl --((8:>*`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: The most useless key on my keyboard is: by maard (Pilgrim) on Nov 25, 2005 at 15:07 UTC
ScrollLock, though... what a pointless key. If I have just text terminal (e.g. when admining some server) and (forgot\|didn't mean) to pipe command to 'less' and the output took more than one screen it's the only way I know to scroll the screen up.	[reply]
Re^4: The most useless key on my keyboard is: by Crackers2 (Parson) on Nov 30, 2005 at 17:13 UTC
On linux, Shift-PgUp/PgDown works for me in most terminals, including the console	[reply]
Re^5: The most useless key on my keyboard is: by superfrink (Curate) on Dec 03, 2005 at 20:42 UTC
If you press ctrl-s it will stop the terminal from scrolling so you can use shift-pgup/pgdown without the terminal scrolling ahead. Press ctrl-q to un-lock the terminal. Your terminal program might not jump down after you press shift-pgup. I'm pretty sure aterm jumps ahead. It might even be a setting somewhere.	[reply]