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Comment by stiray | Hacker News Reader

I hope they will support M4 soon, I cant stand macos and its desire to be different than everything else by custom keyboard shortcuts etc.

After 2 years of usage, I still have issues with basic actions like copy paste.

edit: omg, writing this post, i checked if there is some way to use linux shortcuts and there is (Kanesh/KMonad or Karabiner-Elements). Maybe my suffering will finally stop.

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Counterpoint: OSX has the only sane copy paste shortcuts. The linux standard of "sometimes ctrl-c/v, sometimes shift-ctrl-c/v, and if you mess up you might kill your task" is preposterous.

The command key really has to be my favorite thing about OSX, it lets you do system things without intercepting whatever is going on in the terminal. It also leaves the ctrl key with barely any use, so you can just customize its behavior (for example, I have ctrl+opt+some letter keys assigned to different desktops/spaces, that works great for me)

My favourite thing about the command key is the position - it’s way further to the right than ctrl on most keyboards, which means you don’t have to contort your thumb back and apply lateral pressure to your thumb joint when copy-pasting.

I’m either doing it wrong on Windows or the entire world is putting up with unnecessary finger pain because whoever chose Ctrl-C was a masochist.

I'm not sure what hand position you're using, but on the keyboard I'm at right now, I put my left little finger on control, and use my left index finger for the c/v. Do you mean that you're using your thumb for control and index for c/v?

Originally, the Ctrl key was to the left of A, where Caps Lock is now. This makes most Ctrl key shortcuts a lot more comfortable. They moved Ctrl to the bottom left with the Model M keyboard, which became the standard modern PC keyboard layout. As far as I can tell, the justification for this was that it made the layout more familiar to typewriter users, since Caps Lock is in the same position it's in on a typewriter (see https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/pc/IBM_Personal_Computer_Semin... page 24). Personally, I always remap my key layout on every PC I use so left Ctrl is swapped with Caps Lock.

Ctrl/Shift+Insert are the actual standard, from IBM's CUA.

I know those from growing up with QBASIC and EDIT.COM, but I think the only software I've used that actually supports them is the Windows conhost (the default UI for command-line apps).

What? Ctrl/Shift Insert is supported basically everywhere in Windows, from the lowly Notepad to the behemoth that’s Microsoft Word. Browsers support it. Terminals support it. On Linux all Linux apps I’ve tried support it. Even Emacs which famously doesn’t support the usual C-c C-v supports it (mapped to kill-ring-save and yank). This is as universal as possible in the world without Cmd key.

In fact the last time I bought a keyboard I made sure the keyboard mapping can be customized so I can actually put the Insert key on it.

Same I grew up using Ctrl+Shift+Insert, and only really migrated over to Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V when I started using mouse-driven environments more heavily, because I could drive copy paste with my left hand and keep the mouse in my right.

GNU/Linux[1] seems to support it. Windows probably does too.

[1] Tested on KDE Wayland and Xfce X11.

Aren’t the shortcuts with the command key older than the PC ones (which started out as Shift+Insert etc. actually)? I wouldn’t call that desire to be different (also as mentioned below it has a lot of advantages in a terminal)

What I did was to simply remap Command to Control in the built-in keyboard settings. I don't know if that would solve your problems with shortcuts, but it solved mine. Muscle memory remains intact. The physical key combos on the Mac are now largely the same as on Windows or Linux.

Or the more usual argument: Macos is broken in many ways and you're not allowed to fix it. But you can install some kind of add-on that will sit between you and the broken-as-designed UI and makes it look non-broken.

If someone needs it, https://github.com/Fuzzy-and-Fluffy/windows-keyboard-for-mac

(to replies, yes, i understand that macos keyboard shortcuts might objectively be better, but if you are using multiple computers and macos is the only one of OSs, those shortcuts become pain in the neck)

Dunno, my experience has been different. I cycle between macOS, Linux and Windows all day every day and it’s just automatic muscle memory for me now as I switch between each. Thanks for the link though, keeping that stashed.

What issue do you have with copy/paste?

Command+c command+v has worked every single timein every program since macOS 7.0 when I started.

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