4 ms·
What's interesting about this is that the Mac's option-character mapping has basically remained unchanged since at least the '90s, maybe earlier. They managed t
by sirmarksalot 6y ago
What's interesting about this is that the Mac's option-character mapping has basically remained unchanged since at least the '90s, maybe earlier. They managed to design for a relatively uncommon use case (QWERTY typists who type in Spanish and French), and basically got it right the first time.
When I bought my first Mac in 2012, I was amazed to learn that the tricks I learned in 8th grade French class still worked nearly 20 years later.
- spanhandler 6y ago> They managed to design for a relatively uncommon use case (QWERTY typists who type in Spanish and French), and basically got it right the first time. Kinda, but you do need those to type fluently in English, too, which isn't an uncommon use case for a computer sold in an English-speaking country. We have tons of accented loan words from French and Spanish, among other European languages. We also need a lot more punctuation and "special characters" than any other default English layout I know of makes available. It is entirely a joke that Apple's got the only OS, in the year 2020, that does a good job at the task of composing text in English, out of the box and without compromising other use cases. I don't even know of alternate layouts that are anywhere near as good on another OS. What the actual hell is up with that?
- Symbiote 6y agoLinux (and predecessors) have supported a Compose key for decades, which is more discoverable than hidden combinations like Option+e. (Compose e ' → é. The arrow is Compose - >.) But what's the significant advantage of Mac OS's layout vs e.g. Microsoft Windows US International layout?