I like how Apple introduced the CMD key, with copy/paste linked to it in the terminal, leaving CTRL to work as intended. Even outside the terminal basic emacs key binding work as intended, such as c-k c-u etc

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AnonymousPlanet 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

That's an arrangement I also really appreciate. But the origins are different from what most might assume.

Apple introduced copy and paste in 1983 using the command key. Microsoft later copied the idea using the control key because PCs lacked a command key [1].

X had super, meta, hyper keys before the PC's stunted set of modifiers became a standard [2]. Microsoft and the PC are rarely the origins of things, mainly because CP/M, DOS and later Windows were poor, amateurish, and incomplete copies of other systems.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut,_copy,_and_paste

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_key_(keyboard_button)

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lucideer 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I use Toshy along with an Apple keyboard to work around Linux distros' unfortunate Windowsiness here but I really really wish someone would release a fully fledged distro or DE put together with Apple keyboards in mind.

There's a lot of things about Apple I dislike but it's clear Microsoft's overloading of Ctrl for GUI shortcuts was a move made with complete disregard for terminal users, & one that's resulted in decades of pain for anyone regularly switching between GUI & terminal contexts, & I have to give it to Apple that Cmd was clearly designed to respect, retain & augment optimal terminal use.

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koiueo 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

OTOH, Microsoft's introduction of "menu accelerators" (Alt+*) is an incredible productivity booster (which luckily most Linux graphical toolkits have adopted).

I got to appreciate it only after I had to use macOS at work.

Somehow I got used to Ctrl workarounds in terminal emulators (just add shift). But the lack of accelerators bugs me immensely.

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lucideer 6 days ago | parent [-]

I've always found menu accelerators odd.

I find them a little too dependent on individual app developers word choices to have any kind of consistency across apps I use, plus I tend not to use menus for anything other than infrequent settings changes. Given that they haven't seemed substantially different to macos displaying annotations for bound shortcuts within the menus.

(admittedly I use mac in work & my personal computers at home have all been Linux since my Windows 2003 workstation died, so my knowledge of modern windows apps & their attached accelerators is rusty & I'm probably biased here)

	▲	koiueo 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		The last windows I used was XP. But accelerators do work in Linux. And they are not just about menus: in any modal window I can do Alt+O for Ok. And this paradigm allows discoverability, I don't need to memorize shortcuts, I just hold Alt and look for underscored letters – that's how GUI should be IMO. It's not perfect, and if I were designing UI from scratch, I'd made this feature modal instead of allocating entire physical key for that (like they do hints in vim-like browsers).

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biehl 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Also lovely! I was going to look for somthing like Toshy - https://github.com/RedBearAK/toshy

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louthy 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I like how Apple introduced the CMD key, with copy/paste linked to it in

As someone who switches between macOS and Linux every day, the change of control-key from CTRL to CMD is hella annoying. I am always pressing the wrong combo on macOS.

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npteljes 6 days ago | parent [-]

I completely agree. If only Windows also had WinKey+C/X/V as shortcuts, it would make so much sense in other Windows software too. Same with ALT+TAB and ALT+F4, CTRL+SPACE etc, these should also be handled by the win key. Then the Win/Cmd key would be assigned to OS functions, and the rest of them could be assigned to application functions, providing a clean separation.

	▲	childintime 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Ctrl is different. Alt and Win don't cancel themselves when released, they are modal, and modal sucks. Ctrl is the only safe key besides Fn, so repurpose Fn if you must.

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rafram 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Non-Mac keyboards have a meta / “Windows” key as well, usually sitting there doing nothing.

	▲	samlinnfer 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		On Linux it is often already used for window manager specific shortcuts.
	▲	cycomanic 6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		They are the most common modifier key for tiling window managers. It's very likely one of the most often pressed key in my setup.

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npteljes 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, that is the most sensible choice. OS key to interact with the OS, rest of the keys to interact with the application.