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Comment by Zarel | Hacker News Reader

> Things like living in a web browser and a platform neutral IDE (I use IntelliJ for Clojure, Java, Python, PHP, and Ruby) make OS platform less impactful on using a computer.

Really? I'd think this would make the remaining things matter more. Things like:

- International text input: in OS X, out of the box, é is opt+e, e (or the now even easier: hold down e and choose é from the menu). In Windows, é is alt+0233 or something, or change your keyboard layout and relearn how to type apostrophes. Everything else related to international text input is also much nicer in OS X.

- Trackpad quality: I've yet to find a trackpad as nice as the ones that come on Mac laptops

- emacs keybindings in every text box! Anyone? ...Anyone? Maybe it's just me.

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Not just you — love the Emacs bindings everywhere. It always throws me off on Windows when I'm trying to C-n and C-p around, getting hit with new document and printing dialogs all over the place :)

One more for the keybindings here (actually, they're more like readline keybindings -- C-h being the biggest difference). I would rather like to know how to set up those keybindings pervasively on graphical Linux applications. (The terminal and Emacs already have them, of course, but not the browser.)

On a related note, I like the command key being solely responsible for most GUI application commands (so it doesn't conflict with the above), and would probably also want to incorporate that into an ideal Linux setup. I wonder if someone makes a Linux distro with this sort of thing preconfigured.

You can set emacs keybindings in Gnome apps. I normally do it when I get a new box, but always forget how. A quick google normally gets me there: http://askubuntu.com/questions/354489/emacs-gtk-keybindings-... Like this link, which apparently suggests it doesn't work in Gnome 3.6.

What I find intolerable on a Mac is the behavior of ctrl+left/right. I expect it to jump to previous/next word and nothing else.

The default Apple supporter answer would be: "Apple has had these bindings for longer than the defacto standard has been around", but Apple would do well to get with the program and make the defacto standard as used by the rest of the computing world the default.

I use a Windows keyboard with Mac in the office, for me the ALT key replaces the CTRL key.

I don't prefer it, but it works.

I just swapped the two and it feels more natural! I prefer having the cmd key next to the spacebar.

That's option (/alt) left and right (and has been, IIRC, for 20 years)

I use xkeymacs on my win boxes and I'm quite happy with it.

Woah, that's really cool! Thanks

I'm a long time Emacs user, but I certainly am not aware that OS X supports Emacs key bindings in every text box. My initial reaction is to not believe you, but I will certainly try it out tomorrow.

It is actually pretty common knowledge that OSX has Emacs keybindings by default for text entry. (At least the basic text editing bindings, don't expect a full Emacs implementation and "M-x tetris".)

C-a, C-e, C-n, C-p all work.

EDIT: C-f, C-b work as well.

Are there any others?

Actually, I can tell you for a fact, I've hit M-b (∫) many times and been disappointed by it. I get why, but I'm still disappointed.

My favorite one is C-t (transpose)

And of course there's kill C-k and yank C-y

But sadly, no C-w.

I've never used emacs - Is that 'select word'? I have that system-wide by putting

  "^w" = (selectWord:);

into '~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict'. There's a load of information online about the customisation that can be put in this file. Here's a comment of mine with some links in it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6718604

Annoyingly, Xcode stopped paying attention to this file at some point around version 4, so now you have to maintain a separate version for that.

Only C-something works, no? I'm also still trying M-b / M-f regularly (with either Option or Command for Meta, which has surprising consequences every single time.)

C-t works though, and that's awesome to correct typos.

Ah, so here's the trick. However I have my modifier keys set up for my external (non-Mac) keyboard means I can't really use them. I use my Caps Lock in Emacs for the C modifier, but in OS X my Alt key is the one that works in normal text inputs.

> OS X supports Emacs key bindings

It's a NextStep thing. You can find the complete list in /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Resources/StandardKeyBinding.dict. You can customize them in ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict. The Cocoa API documentation has the details (https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/...). There's a graphical editor for the DefaultKeyBinding dictionary (http://www.cocoabits.com/KeyBindingsEditor/), but I've never used it.

Note that the emacs keybindings even work on iOS. I develop a coding app on iOS and when I use it with a bluetooth keyboard I always take advantage of the emacs-inspired shortcuts.

> - International text input: in OS X, out of the box, é is opt+e, e (or the now even easier: hold down e and choose é from the menu)

With Linux and Gnome, you can have several keyboard layouts, which are very easy to switch between (much like multiple languages on a phone keyboard). Usually I use the English International layout, one quick change (accessible from the global bar) and I've got all my accents (also speak and write in French) easily accessible. A bonus is that there's different international layouts if one doesn't suit you. é is simply ' + e. ç is alt , + c. And so on... Éïôàç

I'm sure OSX is a nice operating system, but Linux has very usable desktop options these days too. Windows, not so sure...

> - emacs keybindings in every text box! Anyone? ...Anyone? Maybe it's just me.

I think this one is only you...

International text input is the kind of thing that many Americans won't need too much.

I love the (limited) Emacs bindings. C-k is probably my all-time favorite.

> International text input is the kind of thing that many Americans won't need too much.

No, but as a non-American, I'm glad that free software has us covered...

> With Linux and Gnome, you can have several keyboard layouts, which are very easy to switch between (much like multiple languages on a phone keyboard).

It's the same on Windows

I think that's very subjective:

- International text input: I can't remember the last time I had to use accents or special characters not in my native language; a few greek letters for formulae, and generally I can use '/alpha' instead of α. Isn't having to use chars not in your language pretty uncommon?

- Trackpad quality: yes, I love using Macbook trackpads, but I use the mouse/trackpad very little anyway, and isn't something I find useful enough to miss much.

- emacs keybindings: sounds fantastic, but a) not many people use them and b) don't know if they'd be that great for Vim-ers like me.

Even if there are a lot of things that Mac might do better than Windows and Linux, I agree that the popularity of so many cross-platform tools and the web have nullfied a huge part of it.

Re: International text input:

I only use keyboards with the english international layout although I'm from Austria and the german layout would be the natural one. Therefore the keyboard layout in the OS is also set to english international. I do this because I program.

And still I'm very happy about the easy access for special characters, because in literally every email I have to use one of ß, ä, ö or ü.

> I do this because I program.

Really? I guess it might be different with the german keyboards, but I've had no difficulties programming on a Swedish keyboard.

English has lots of loan words using accents including common words like café and résumé and more uncommon ones like crème brûlée. It has native although uncommon accents, e.g. in coöperation. Personally, I also commonly type in Swedish which has the extra letters å, ä and ö in its alphabet, sometimes type in German (ö, ü and ß) and occasionally use an IME for 日本語 (Japanese). IME aside, losing direct access to the above accents, all of which are muscle memory by now, is one of the major reasons I probably wouldn’t consider a Windows laptop.

(I didn’t mention metakey access to typing typographically correct characters: –, “, ”, ‘, ’, … etc)

Sure, but people rarely type them out - I might ask you to meet me at a particular cafe, but less likely at a particular café.

Isn’t it chicken and egg though? People rarely type them out because they’re very hard to type out on a Windows machine.

Or you could type it in two strokes instead by typing ´ then e. Typographical punctuation should be the editor's concern when it matters.

> b) don't know if they'd be that great for Vim-ers like me.

They are: I am addicted to vim, and I use bash/zsh in emacs mode, so having the consistency is incredible.

Also having cmd+C for the GUI and ctrl+C for the command line is awesome. This last feature is one of the few things that kills Linux for me (ended up hacking on GTK, which turns out to have both an undocumented setting and an obscure compile time constant somewhere that ends up not working. And no, remapping every single app shortcut is not an option — I tried).

So how do you do è, ê and ë in OS X? In Windows, it's the French keyboard (a mere Alt-Shift away), and e+', e+{ or e+}, a small price to pay for convenience. You can't get away from double keystrokes. Except for é, which is /.

Just hold e for e view seconds and chose which version you want.

It might be easier if you have to use it infrequently, however accents with deadkeys are much faster if you type. Can't imagine typing even a paragraph while having to pause, even for a second, on every accented character (mind you, in some languages such as greek, almost every word has an accented vowel, sometimes two).

I'm barely monolingual let alone bilingual, so I'm honestly curious: how does spell check do here? Are you able to type most words without the accents and let an auto-correct tool auto-magically correct things?

I can only speak about Greek. That doesn't work very well there because many times a word is accented depending on its role in the sentence or its grammar (and via versa).

So if you just apply automatic spell-correction, you have to proof read it afterwords, which is more of a hassle than accenting it manually -because it's a more cognitive work.

Correct accents in greek matter a lot. Reading incorrectly accented words make comprehending quite a bit painful and slow, my guess is because the brain expects something, receives something else and then tries automatically to make sense of what is trained to know it's wrong, slowing the whole process down.

Somewhat on topic: a while back I turned on international keyboard support on my iPhone. When I need to write something in French on the phone, I tap the globe icon on the keyboard, it swaps to AZERTY, and the autocorrect features start picking up French and correcting accents into the text for me. Is useful :)

on linux, using us-mac:

è: option/r-alt+`

ê: option/r-alt+i

ë: option/r-alt+u

(for example, option+` followed by e will do è)

i mostly use us-mac because i'm used to using option to type accents and because i can keep my en keyboard and type on pt-br without problems.

I vastly prefer the compose key method on Linux. You almost never have to worry about how to type a character. Type compose, hit something that vaguely looks like the accent you want, and then the letter.

Compose, ", e => ë

Compose, ', e => é

Compose, ^, e => ê

I so wish this system was available more universally.

What about ç or å or other stuff like ° or ¡ and ¿?

Apple's consistent use of the "optional" characters is a lot like the old C-64 with the graphical extras available at the push of two buttons.

> What about ç or å or other stuff like ° or ¡ and ¿?

Those are all covered:

http://fsymbols.com/keyboard/linux/compose/

Without looking anything up, I'd guess "compose-,-c" and "compose-o-a", for the first two, and that turns out to be correct.

I had to try a few things for the degree symbol, but I guessed it on my third try (it's "compose-o-o"). Once I knew that, my first guess for ¿ was "compose-?-?", which also turned out to be correct.

But as the other reply said, you can always look them up if necessary, which you'd almost certainly have to do with the Mac's system of "option + some arbitrarily selected key".

"International text input: in OS X, out of the box, é is opt+e, "

In Windows too, English International uses the same key layout and activates the additional keystrokes for accents and non english characters (i.e Alt+e is é, or Alt+n for ñ)

Unless there's a menu that begins with the letter E, right?

Not really but it is my bad. It is really Alt.Gr + e instead of just Alt. +e

On the other hand, OS X comes with a terrible Japanese IME. The Google one that's available on OS X and Windows makes things better but until that came out Windows was just unquestionably way better for Japanese text input.

Really? I thought kotoeri was pretty decent, although I will forever remain an ibus fan when it comes to IME's.

It's hard to notice until you're really using it a lot, but it has a hard time with stuff like people's names that Windows does better with. I might be getting a little carried away saying it's "terrible" but I was a student in Japan for a while and the limitations became obvious and annoying to me under those circumstances.

Apple does tap-to-click not too well, and doesn't do tap+tap-to-drag at all. So I have to use better touch tool, so I constantly drag shit accidentally. what a pain, both windows and linux do these out of the box.

tp+tap to drag works. enable it under accessibility settings.

> - International text input:

Just press the key for ´ and then e and then you have é. Tada!

I have never even heard of the emacs things. Can you explain further?

Many OS X keyboard shortcuts are Emacs-inspired, though they aren't extensible in the way that Emacs is.

http://www.cultofmac.com/247681/use-these-emacs-legacy-keybo...

You can extend them actually:

http://osxnotes.net/keybindings.html

On most OSes you can also compose using ´ then e for é.

AltGr+e gives me é

It gives me €.

That's interesting, AltGr+4 gives me €, UK keyboard I guess.

There's an app for the 2 software issues.

Trackpads are OK, but I like my vertical mouse and touch-screens for Windows.

There is? I've looked everywhere for an international keyboard that doesn't replace how the apostrophe key works in Windows but I've never been able to find it.

I also don't think there's an app to make every textbox behave in a standard way in Windows or Linux. If only it were that easy.

The trackpad is sadly only nice in OS X; the Windows drivers are mediocre and nothing special. Still, though, I think it speaks volumes that Windows users want to use mice all the time while Mac trackpads are so nice that there was enough demand for Apple to release one for their desktops.

The apple trackpad rules. I find it's amazingly productive.

No Windows trackpad has even come close.

There is a nice parallel here. Take advanced Mechanical CAD applications. Pro Engineer, Solidworks, Siemens NX, etc...

Back in the 90's, there was a lot of basic UX work being done on view manipulation. It's a hard problem in some respects. Modes, focus, picks, and a complicated thing to spin around and get into.

A company called SDRC spent a bunch of money on UX research. They ended up using a few of the function keys to trigger view manipulation. And it worked no matter what mode, pick, dialog, or anything else was going on. Most importantly, it only required mouse movement. No holding one button down while moving the thing. No finger fatigue after a lot of view manipulation.

Other companies didn't do this work, and their view commands were modal, or required complex mouse button hold + move operations.

A little company making 3D input devices grew a nice, profitable business out of poor UX design. Funny, their sales to SDRC people were nothing compared to the sales for most Mechanical CAD programs...

So, getting back to that track pad on Apple and UX in general. The Apple OS + track pad has it down cold. It's functional in nearly every use case, and it's low fatigue, and it's fairly discoverable as well as usable.

In Windows land, we get better mice to improve on poor UX. We get touch screens to improve on poor UX. And we get other things to improve on poor things...

People may not agree with all of what Apple sees as a value add. Totally get that. I personally won't touch the closed down iPad and iPhone. They aren't useful to me.

But, the UX on those is very solid.

I do the vast majority of my writing, coding and other non Windows specific work on a Mac Pro, and it's because that UX is there, and I don't need anything but the machine and a nice place to work.

When I go to power up on my Windows machine, out comes the mouse, and the utilities, and, and, and...

Not the same experience at all.

All that said, touch on the Surface does provide some options, but I personally don't find extending my hand any where near optimal compared to a quick gesture on the trackpad that is always right there, and that always does the same thing for the same gestures...

I use the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator[1]. This way, I can start from the current layout associated with my keyboard, and add the key I need. This way, It does not changes anything that I'm used to. It only adds new things. This might be what you're looking for?

[1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964665.aspx

Every single Windows trackpad is shit, and the common feature of most of them is Synaptics. Windows laptop makers could probably get near double digit market percentage increases from fixing their shitty track pad situation alone.

Android and Microsoft phones and tablets' touch sensitivity is great, so it's not some secret of Apple's.

Yes, AutoHotKey can easily take care of the issue with accent keys and with the Emacs shortcuts you want to implement. A search for `autohotkey accent characters` shows many people using it for this purpose. You can implement all kinds of keyboard shortcuts with AutoHotKey.

On the topic of trackpads - maybe you could help me understand - when you use the keyboard and trackpad that's built-into the laptop, is it because you're forced to (in a plane) or because you prefer it? I imagine all Mac users who say they can't ever leave the Apple trackpad are environmentally limited to using whatever is built-in to the laptop.

In other words - when I work, I prefer 2 or 3 monitors that are situated about 2 feet from my face and a full size keyboard with numpad (Microsoft Natural). So, I just could never see myself reaching all the way over to the laptop that is driving all of this in order to use a touch pad. But even so, I find all touch pads including Apple's to be imprecise compared to my 5 button vertical mouse. I also have auto-scrolling on Windows which OS X doesn't really do (this is where you push the middle mouse button down and then as you move the entire mouse, things scroll, until you release the button).

I tried using an Apple wireless trackpad (magic trackpad?). Maybe you use one of those with your work setup?

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