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Comment by rogerbinns | Hacker News Reader

The key I have issue with is the weird sort of smiley. Or maybe it is half a bathtub. Or some sort of plumbing diagram. At least the command key can be described to someone else as a clover. What on earth were people supposed to associate the skateboard ramp with? It is the middle one in this image http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/MacBook_o...

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It looks like a line that's taking an alternate route.

The ISO symbol shows that a little more clearly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ISOIEC-9995-7-025--ISO-700...

It's a circuit diagram for a switch. It represents a choice between two paths, as appropriate for the "option" key.

http://electronicsclub.info/circuitsymbols.htm#switches

That's the international, ISO standard symbol for "Two finger salute to any Brits that want a # key". By pressing it with the number '3' we used to be able to type a # symbol, even though it wasn't shown on the key, because Apple hates us.

Since Lion Apple has decided that just making our lives difficult wasn't enough, we really don't deserve the # symbol at all, and now that combination switches desktops. There is no keyboard combination on a standard, un-hacked factory delivered UK Mac that produces a # symbol. Really.

I keep a text file on my desktop that contains a single # character and cut-n-paste it when I need one.

What?

Alt-3 works just fine me on a UK Mac for making a #. I have made no tweaks.

What OS are you running? What are your physical keyboard and keyboard map, UK or US?

Mavericks, but behaviour has stayed consistent since OS X Public Beta (pre-Cheetah) for me and was probably the same on Classic.

Physical keyboards I've used have always been en_GB, internal or external.

Alt-3 for # working fine here (in the UK). You might have non-standard shortcuts set up in System Prefs > Mission Control or an odd keyboard layout installed.

My favourite is "toothbrush head".

I've heard it called "train tracks" since it looks like a set of railway points.

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