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Eighty Shades of Option Key
- marssaxman 3y ago> the Option key, also called Alt key, because of the switch symbol ⌥ that adorns it Oh, is that what the squiggly symbol represents? I've been looking at it for decades without seeing anything more than an abstract shape.
- nnf 3y agoThanks for extracting that interesting tidbit. I was in the same boat, but now I can put a check mark next to "learn something new today."
- spread_love 3y agoLike a train switching tracks! I never noticed. So what does ⌘ represent?
- bombcar 3y agoApparently it is "Command" but also the Swedish campground symbol? https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Swedish_Campground.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Swedish_Campgrou...
- Findecanor 3y agoIt is on Swedish road signs indicating a sight/attraction/monument, usually an ancient one. It is a stylised ribbon/snake pattern that resembles one that you could find on a rune stone. <https://xn--vgmrken-5wac.se/tag/sevardhet/ https://xn--vgmrken-5wac.se/tag/sevardhet/> A variation of the symbol is also the symbol for the National Heritage Board, which is in charge of protection of ancient monuments. The road sign for "Camp ground" has a stylised tent: <https://xn--vgmrken-5wac.se/tag/campingplats/ https://xn--vgmrken-5wac.se/tag/campingplats/>
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- meepmorp 3y ago“Place of interest sign,” according to the Unicode spec. Also, command key and OS key as secondary meanings. https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2300.pdf https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2300.pdf
- galangalalgol 3y agoThat you are using a mac? I ised to still call it the super or windows button, because my macbook ran linux. This whole article is mac centric, but it doesn't seem aware of that. Most keyboards don't have the switch symbol, most just say alt, and its where the mac has the command key.
- itishappy 3y ago> This whole article is mac centric, but it doesn't seem aware of that. I found it pretty clear from the title, site affiliation disclaimer, background image, section headers, language, and overall theme of the article. What's misleading you?
- reaperducer 3y agoSo what does ⌘ represent? The revisionist history is that it's a Swedish map symbol repurposed. People who were there will tell you that it's called "double infinity" and was used because the regular infinity symbol lacked visual weight and it was thought might be too similar to other keys.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y agoInteresting. Though I'm curious why infinity was even a consideration in the first place.
- reaperducer 3y agoInteresting. Though I'm curious why infinity was even a consideration in the first place. That part I don't know. Maybe just because it's geeky, and the original Mac team was certainly that; even the ones involved in its physical design.
- _shantaram 3y agoMacintosh Folklore disagrees. That's literally as close to "people who were there" as one can get. https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Swedish_Campground.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Swedish_Campgrou...
- SeanLuke 3y agoSusan Kare selected the symbol herself. I wouldn't exactly call her explanation "revisionist".
- twic 3y agoA propeller. On the early prototypes of the Mac, that key was used to fire the torpedoes.
- thih9 3y agoA castle. > Susan Kare states that she has since been told that the symbol was picked for its Scandinavian usage due to its resembling the shape of a square castle with round corner towers as seen from above looking down, notably Borgholm Castle. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_key#Origin_of_the_symbol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_key#Origin_of_the_sy...
- nine_k 3y agoIt's a plain electric switch symbol. It's funny how such buttoned-up devices as macbooks carry a raw engineering symbol right on their faces.
- robin_reala 3y agoMakes up for the command symbol ⌘ next to it that was stolen rather randomly from the Swedish map symbol for a place of historical interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_key#Origin_of_the_symbol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_key#Origin_of_the_symb...
- taneq 3y agoIt's stylized to the point where it's not really recognizable without prior context, though. A bit like the I / O markings on power switches which are apparently literally meant to be a 1 (on) or 0 (off), which makes perfect sense except they're usually not rendered as numerals and there are too many possible interpretations for it (open vs. closed circuit? "in" / "out"? "inactive" / "on"?) to be easy to figure out just from the markings. This is even more irritating since we're printing things on the switch in the first place, so why not just write "on" / "off" and be done with it?
- nine_k 3y agoIDK, to me it's how people draw it on schematics when they are not using a CAD :) http://www.learningaboutelectronics.com/images/SPDT-switch-circuit.png http://www.learningaboutelectronics.com/images/SPDT-switch-c...
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y agoKind of a silly choice when you think about it. They're all switches.
- Findecanor 3y agoBut is it a railway switch or an electric switch? Either way, it is a changeover switch for selecting between two options, not a momentary on/off switch like the key switches on a keyboard.
- thought_alarm 3y agoThe switch symbol dates back to the very first international Lisa keyboards from 1983. They needed a language-independent symbol for the "Option" key in 1983, that's what someone chose, and it stuck. Some other keyboard trivia: - The 1983 Lisa used the Apple logo for its command key. The 1984 Mac used the cloverleaf symbol instead because Steve Jobs didn't like seeing so many Apple Logos in the main menus. - The command key has been around since 1983, but is was never labelled "Command" on the US-English keyboard, nor was that key referred to as "Command" in the documentation. It just lore that this strange cloverleaf key was called "Command", and passed down through oral tradition. Apple finally labelled the key in the late 2000s. - Apple has been very conservative about its keyboard layouts and symbols. The original Mac and Lisa had separate Enter and Return keys. The separate "Enter" key survived will into the 2000s iBook and Powerbook keyboards. It was finally removed with the MacBook in 2006. - Likewise, the Apple Logo was added to the command key in 1986, for compatibility with the Apple II. It wasn't removed until the late 2000s. - The Apple Extended Keyboard from 1987 was Apple's first keyboard to use a PC-style 104 key layout. This keyboard includes all of the PC-specific text such as Alt, Scroll Lock, Print Screen, etc. This is how the Option key came to be knows as "Alt" on non-US keyboards.
- SeanLuke 3y ago> The command key has been around since 1983, but is was never labelled "Command" on the US-English keyboard, nor was that key referred to as "Command" in the documentation. It just lore that this strange cloverleaf key was called "Command", and passed down through oral tradition. Apple finally labelled the key in the late 2000s. Nope. It was referred to as the "Command Key" many, many times in the original 1984 Mac manual. See the index: https://vintageapple.org/macmanuals/pdf/Macintosh_1984.pdf https://vintageapple.org/macmanuals/pdf/Macintosh_1984.pdf The NeXT workstation, circa 1987, actually replaced the cloverleaf symbol with the word "Command". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NeXT_Keyboard_Command_Key.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NeXT_Keyboard_Command_Key...
- bloopernova 3y agoI have a spare button in my second layer layout on my mouse. I should map it to option+click and see how I like it. The mouse is a Ploopy mouse. QMK, open source schematics, 3D printed parts, loads of useful buttons. Highly recommended if you're prepared to edit C code to set its layout. https://ploopy.co/mouse/ https://ploopy.co/mouse/
- Given_47 3y agoSlaps forehead I was about to reply and say how I have a qmk board and have been deliberating about getting a ploopy for a while but I’m too accustomed to my 13 button mouse… And then I reread your comment > second layer For whatever reason, something so fundamental to qmk such as layers didn’t even occur to me as a possibility for a mouse. So thank you for indirectly getting me around that weird mental block haha!
- nnf 3y agoAnother use for the Option key that I didn't see in the article: if you hold it down and click to another application (or on the desktop), all of the current application's windows will be hidden. It's the same effect as the menu item [Application] > Hide [Application] (⌘H).
- SeanLuke 3y ago>Stuck between the Command and Control (ctrl, or ^) keys, the Option key, also called Alt key, because of the switch symbol ... that adorns it No. It's called the option key because it was named that on the original 1984 Mac, full stop. It had one purpose: as an auxiliary shift key, giving access to additional characters and to accents via combos. It's never called the "Alt Key", at least not on MacOS. IIRC the option key had the word "Alt" above it in the late 1990s primarily to provide some keyboard compatibility with virtual machines etc. that ran Windows 95: in this case, the Option Key served as the IBM PC's Alt key. Later USB Mac keyboards were set up to map Alt and Option to the same keymapping so Mac keyboards could be used on PCs and vice versa. New Macs no longer include the word "Alt". What you're calling the "switch symbol" didn't show up until much, much later. And the symbol is not called the "switch symbol". It's called the Option Key Symbol, Unicode U2325. I doubt it's meant to imply "switching" of launching options. It's worth mentioning that the NeXT workstation keyboards also had Option keys that worked effectively identically top the Mac. Late-model Apple IIs had open- and close-apple keys and supposedly the close-apple key served the same function, but I'm not convinced. > It is (almost) never used alone, but in combination with other keys, to launch various actions. The primary function of the option key has always been as a second shift key. But just like the shift and control and function keys, the option key can be used as a modifier key for the command key. Various apps have come to use it for their own unusual purposes as well. This has a long history: even the original MacPaint used the option key in combination with mouse clicks to do alternative things (same thing with the shift key). This notion of multiple shift/modifier keys is quite old: the author might look up the concept of the "bucky bit". The author also seems to have neglected a HUGE use of the option key in Terminal.app: as Emacs's META key.
- derefr 3y ago> And the symbol is not called the "switch symbol". It's called the Option Key Symbol, Unicode U2325. I doubt it's meant to imply "switching" of launching options. It doesn't matter what it's called in Unicode, it is literally the symbol for an (open) switch in an electrical wiring diagram. It's trying to invoke that bit of adjacent-domain "visual jargon" to imply to people who are first-time computer users — but who have experience with electronics — what the key will do / what it is used for. It's a switch; it switches the function of other keys! And it doesn't just switch the function of commands; it also switches the function of typing regular keys — i.e. it momentarily switches your keyboard layout to a second, alternative "page" of the same keyboard layout (which is essentially the same as the "Alt Gr" key in Windows.)
- Waterluvian 3y agoModifier keys feel like a Wild West. I really wish the semantics were: One key owned by the OS. One key owned by the App. One key owned by the Context. If this were true, configuring keys for web apps, for example, would be far less of a mess. A website would only own the context key and would never fear clobbering other hotkeys.
- rogual 3y agoDon't know why I'm surprised, but what a good article! In-depth, imformation-dense, and easy to read. Goes on way past the point when the author could have stopped writing and still got shares on social media. I've always liked the Mac's hidden option-key features. It's a tasteful way of offering a lot of functionality without cluttering up the interface with things you don't need most of the time. To me, it's nicer than having to declare yourself a “power user” and switch on all the extra features for good. So, it was good to see that even in the latest MacOS releases, which I tend to feel are on a bit of a steady decline from the peak of Apple good taste, they're still adding secret option-key treasure to some of their new stuff. Gives a bit of hope for the future of the platform, I suppose.
- Given_47 3y agoThe option key layer is undoubtedly useful for many people but for someone like me that wants to use this free modifier for custom bindings jeez it was maddening at first to work around that Apple stuff. Option + IJKL inverse T for arrow keys (unfortunately got into vim after I built up that muscle memory) and option + P for enter among many others