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In OS X, keys tend to do the same things everywhere because there is this carefully drawn distinction between Cmd and Control. It's my 2nd year on the Mac and

In OS X, keys tend to do the same things everywhere because there is this carefully drawn distinction between Cmd and Control. It's my 2nd year on the Mac and I continue to struggle with hotkeys: they are a mess. On top of my head: how come Ctrl+left won't bring me to the end of the line in Terminal but does in every other editable window? And why Shift+Command+arrows switch tabs in Terminal but not in Safari? OSX doesn't even have a universal "close this goddamn window" hot key, which drives me crazy - some windows go away with Esc while others need Command+W, plus you get a super weird 3rd variety which can't be closed from the keyboard at all! OSX is by far the least typist friendly GUI in my humble opinion. On the other hand Linux, especially Gnome, absolutely rocks with their handling of hot keys: there are many more of them (I can move/resize windows on a keyboard) and the bindings are very consistent. Whereas OSX is simply not usable without a mouse: even top-level menu items don't have hot keys, like Alt+E for "Edit" or Alt+F for "File".

nileshk 18y ago
In OS X, I find that I am better off using the Emacs-style keyboard shortcuts that are available in most applications (CTRL-A/E/N/P/F/B and a few others). Many of these shortcuts also work in the terminal when using bash. For your example going to the end of the line is CTRL-E; it works in most apps and you didn't even have to move your hands away from the home row. I use these when using bash on Linux, too. I too am annoyed by those windows that require Esc to go away, like the font chooser, as I expect Cmd-W to work univerally for that. I found some AppleScripts somewhere that can be used to move/resize windows with the keyboard, but haven't tried them out yet, but that's also something I wish OS X could do out of box. Moving/resizing windows in OS X is really inefficient, and apps aren't very efficient about new window placement. I use Cmd-Shift-{ and Cmd-Shift-} to switch tabs which appears to what's been standardized on, but just tried Cmd-Shift-arrows and it works in both Terminal and Safari (using Leopard) but not Firefox. I find you have to memorize a lot more to be efficient with OS X's hot keys, due to the lack of mnemonics.

nileshk 18y ago

In OS X, I find that I am better off using the Emacs-style keyboard shortcuts that are available in most applications (CTRL-A/E/N/P/F/B and a few others). Many of these shortcuts also work in the terminal when using bash. For your example going to the end of the line is CTRL-E; it works in most apps and you didn't even have to move your hands away from the home row. I use these when using bash on Linux, too. I too am annoyed by those windows that require Esc to go away, like the font chooser, as I expect Cmd-W to work univerally for that. I found some AppleScripts somewhere that can be used to move/resize windows with the keyboard, but haven't tried them out yet, but that's also something I wish OS X could do out of box. Moving/resizing windows in OS X is really inefficient, and apps aren't very efficient about new window placement. I use Cmd-Shift-{ and Cmd-Shift-} to switch tabs which appears to what's been standardized on, but just tried Cmd-Shift-arrows and it works in both Terminal and Safari (using Leopard) but not Firefox. I find you have to memorize a lot more to be efficient with OS X's hot keys, due to the lack of mnemonics.