4 ms·

There are a few reasons why I switched from PC to Mac, but there's only one reason I'll never switch back—it's this em-dash shortcut.

by gk1 9y ago

alanfalcon 9y ago
I had to program this and other special characters—notably •, ™, and ®—as an autohotkey script on my work PC. I was going insane. I already had autohotkey going to reverse the direction of Windows’ stubbon backwards scroll anyway. (Once I used so-called “natural scrolling” for a week it became impossible to understand why anyone would choose anything else.)
- xemoka 9y ago
  Hey, you can do that reversal with a registry edit too eh: http://www.vvse.com/blog/blog/2012/02/27/reverse-scrolling-on-windows-7/ http://www.vvse.com/blog/blog/2012/02/27/reverse-scrolling-o...
- ScottBurson 9y ago
  When you move your eyes downward, the world seems to move up. Do you therefore call that "looking up"?
  - alanfalcon 9y ago
    No. I’d get dizzy real fast if that very natural association between movement and perception were suddenly reversed though. (Somehow that didn’t happen when I started using natural scrolling, only when trying to go back from it.)
ashark 9y ago
The em-dash shortcut, system-wide remapping of CAPS LOCK to CTRL from the GUI in about 15 seconds flat, a top-level modifier key (command) that's respected enough by developers that it mostly retains its "I belong to the OS and, therefore, to the user, not to you, mere program" character, and a de facto standard package manager that leaves the base system the hell alone, almost never breaks, and can install many of the binary packages I want. Also if I went back to Linux I'd have to figure out how to remap my window controls to Spectacle's defaults, which'd probably take forever or end up being impossible in the window manager I settled on or whatever. It's the little things.
- hn_643 9y ago
  > a top-level modifier key (command) that's respected enough by developers that it mostly retains its "I belong to the OS and, therefore, to the user, not to you, mere program" character Really? Every program on OSX seems to use some weird combination of CMD/SHIFT/CTRL/OPT keys but I don't know if I've ever seen a single Windows/Linux program use the Windows key.
chrismorgan 9y ago
Once you acquire a Compose key, you never can go back. `Compose - - -` = —. I write with curly quotes, hyphens, minuses, dashes, superscripts, Greek letters, &c. all thanks to my Compose key. (Constraining myself to ASCII is actually hard, and I only use straight quotes when it’s actually what I need, when programming.) My last laptop ran Arch Linux; but I was willing to switch to Windows for the superb hardware that is Microsoft’s Surface Book, once WSL existed, and I knew that WinCompose existed—had either of these two items not been possible, I could not have switched to Windows.
sjwright 9y ago
Also for me: Opt-P for Pi π Opt-8 for Bullet • Opt-Shift-8 for Degree ° (And there are simple, memorable shortcuts for Pounds, Cents, Yen, Euro, Trademark, Copyright, Ohms, Infinity, and lots of math notation...)
- kps 9y ago
  On *nix with xkb, you can get these by selecting the 'us(mac)' layout. You'll need an AltGraph key (i.e. Option), which is usually on AltRight in Windows fashion.

There are a few reasons why I switched from PC to Mac, but there's only one reason I'll never switch back—it's this em-dash shortcut.

by gk1 9y ago

There are a few reasons why I switched from PC to Mac, but there's only one reason I'll never switch back—it's this em-dash shortcut.

alanfalcon 9y ago

I had to program this and other special characters—notably •, ™, and ®—as an autohotkey script on my work PC. I was going insane. I already had autohotkey going to reverse the direction of Windows’ stubbon backwards scroll anyway. (Once I used so-called “natural scrolling” for a week it became impossible to understand why anyone would choose anything else.)

xemoka 9y ago
Hey, you can do that reversal with a registry edit too eh: http://www.vvse.com/blog/blog/2012/02/27/reverse-scrolling-on-windows-7/ http://www.vvse.com/blog/blog/2012/02/27/reverse-scrolling-o...
ScottBurson 9y ago
When you move your eyes downward, the world seems to move up. Do you therefore call that "looking up"?
- alanfalcon 9y ago
  No. I’d get dizzy real fast if that very natural association between movement and perception were suddenly reversed though. (Somehow that didn’t happen when I started using natural scrolling, only when trying to go back from it.)

ashark 9y ago

The em-dash shortcut, system-wide remapping of CAPS LOCK to CTRL from the GUI in about 15 seconds flat, a top-level modifier key (command) that's respected enough by developers that it mostly retains its "I belong to the OS and, therefore, to the user, not to you, mere program" character, and a de facto standard package manager that leaves the base system the hell alone, almost never breaks, and can install many of the binary packages I want. Also if I went back to Linux I'd have to figure out how to remap my window controls to Spectacle's defaults, which'd probably take forever or end up being impossible in the window manager I settled on or whatever. It's the little things.

hn_643 9y ago
> a top-level modifier key (command) that's respected enough by developers that it mostly retains its "I belong to the OS and, therefore, to the user, not to you, mere program" character Really? Every program on OSX seems to use some weird combination of CMD/SHIFT/CTRL/OPT keys but I don't know if I've ever seen a single Windows/Linux program use the Windows key.

chrismorgan 9y ago

Once you acquire a Compose key, you never can go back. `Compose - - -` = —. I write with curly quotes, hyphens, minuses, dashes, superscripts, Greek letters, &c. all thanks to my Compose key. (Constraining myself to ASCII is actually hard, and I only use straight quotes when it’s actually what I need, when programming.) My last laptop ran Arch Linux; but I was willing to switch to Windows for the superb hardware that is Microsoft’s Surface Book, once WSL existed, and I knew that WinCompose existed—had either of these two items not been possible, I could not have switched to Windows.

sjwright 9y ago

Also for me: Opt-P for Pi π Opt-8 for Bullet • Opt-Shift-8 for Degree ° (And there are simple, memorable shortcuts for Pounds, Cents, Yen, Euro, Trademark, Copyright, Ohms, Infinity, and lots of math notation...)

kps 9y ago
On *nix with xkb, you can get these by selecting the 'us(mac)' layout. You'll need an AltGraph key (i.e. Option), which is usually on AltRight in Windows fashion.