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0 pointscamgunz2y ago0 comments

I think I've lost the plot here. Let's play it back:

1. Me: Macs also have the same "Fn on the far left" layout as ThinkPads and Macs/ThinkPads have basically won in the tech space.

2. You: Macs have a better design here - they use the more convenient thumb for Ctrl functions, so fn on the far left is not relevant

3. Me: Nah in the terminal where I spend 90% of my time Ctrl is Ctrl.

4. You: Unless you rebind it to make your experience 100% consistent

5. Me: If we're saying rebinding is an acceptable solution then what does it matter what order the keys are in?

6. You: The amount of rebinding still differs due to Alt, defaults unfortunately matter even if you change them.

Like, sure I guess rebinding 4 keys is more work than rebinding 3. I was just confused (5) because you said that the Mac's design is better (2) but then you seemed to abandon that argument by saying you can just rebind keys (4). Your response at (6) seems irrelevant; why is Alt (a key not on the Mac keyboard; do you mean Option?) germane?

> How do you do it on Windows where it's the same combo from the start?

Pretty much the same way the Mac does it [0]: let Ctrl-C mean "cancel" and use some other key combo for copy (you guessed it).

But, again overall rebinding is an imperfect solution. A lot of things don't know you rebound your keys, there can be weird clashes, etc.

[0]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/console/ctrl-c-and...

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3 comments · 1 top-level

eviks2y ago· 2 in thread

> why is Alt (a key not on the Mac keyboard; do you mean Option?) germane?

It is a literal (as in both printed on the key and referenced in the OS/docs) key on a Mac keyboard with, you're just confused by the fact it also has another name.

> A lot of things don't know you rebound your keys, there can be weird clashes, etc

Like what? If you just move 4 keys all the things will know, that's a system-wide rebinding. And what clashes do you mean? You've only provided a single example Ctrl-C example, which turns out to be easy to resolve in either the same way it's resolved in Windows. Or in a better way

But also, if you recognize there are many clashes that need to be resolved via rebinding, then this "rebinding 4 keys is more work than rebinding 3." doesn't make sense, guess that's why you're confused again. Alt is germane precisely because rebinding 4 keys isn't enough since default keybinds work differently with these modifiers.

1. On a Mac Cmd key is already used by the OS for most of control functions, so it's easy to rebind the few terminal Ctrl keys to Cmd without moving those 4 keys around, and resolve only those direct clashes

2. But on a PC Alt is used for some common operations, so if you move Ctrl to the more convenient thumb location, you'll have to deal with moving some of those keybinds, so resolve clashes that potentially touch more apps/keybinds than just terminal keybinds

camgunzOP2y ago

> It is a literal (as in both printed on the key and referenced in the OS/docs) key on a Mac keyboard with, you're just confused by the fact it also has another name.

I feel like we're in a weird place in this discussion. AFAICT no keyboard Apple currently ships labels Option as Alt, though it is true they have shipped keyboards with this in the past. There's no need to condescend, or maybe you were just referring to PC keyboards and trying to bail yourself out here?

> Like what? If you just move 4 keys all the things will know, that's a system-wide rebinding.

Web apps don't know. Swap Control/Option and load up Google Docs. The binds they list don't take into account the swap, though the new binds work correctly. Also in iTerm2 Pointer settings the Cmd/Control/Option icons don't update. Etc. etc. etc.

> You've only provided a single example Ctrl-C example

My point is that it's always gonna be a little imperfect and maybe a lot of work. Let's say you did want to basically make iTerm2 function like xterm in Linux; what that means is Ctrl-C is cancel and copy/paste is done w/ the mouse. Well, you can't get rid of Command-C for copy, and you can't get the "copy on select" behavior either, so that's a bust. Let's abandon a Linux-alike and just add an App Shortcut for ^C -> Copy. Some terminals are smart enough to use Copy when something's selected and use Cancel otherwise, but Vim's isn't :(. Also if you have anything bound to Ctrl-C in those apps you lose the app's bind, and you don't always have a way to get it back. Pasting is another problem: if you bind ^V -> Paste, any terminal app that uses ^V as a keybinding (Vim again) will instead get whatever's in your clipboard.

> But also, if you recognize there are many clashes that need to be resolved via rebinding, then this "rebinding 4 keys is more work than rebinding 3." doesn't make sense, guess that's why you're confused again. Alt is germane precisely because rebinding 4 keys isn't enough since default keybinds work differently with these modifiers.

> it's easy to rebind the few terminal Ctrl keys to Cmd without moving those 4 keys around, and resolve only those direct clashes

You can't have it both ways. Either rebinding is easy or there are many clashes.

> But on a PC Alt is used for some common operations, so if you move Ctrl to the more convenient thumb location, you'll have to deal with moving some of those keybinds, so resolve clashes that potentially touch more apps/keybinds than just terminal keybinds

Great, the Alt you were talking about is for PC keyboards. That's what I thought; dunno why we had to go deep into like, API docs for macOS. Sometimes people goof! That's OK! Now I see what you meant here. Yeah but like, welcome to more rebinds across more apps.

---

AFAIK people use Karabiner to pretty good success here. I've never tried it. Maybe it makes everything easier, or maybe you've got one more fiddly thing to maintain.

[0]: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK2A3LL/A/magic-keyboard-...

[1]: https://www.apple.com/ipad-keyboards/

eviks2y ago

Yeah, the fact that you've never tried Karabiner explains a lot of why you keep wrongly insisting things are impossible

> Swap Control/Option ... the new binds work correctly

That means the web app knows. Or do you want it to show the wrong keycap labels instead of the correct key function names?

> Well, you can't get rid of Command-C for copy

You can. Depending on the terminal you can do it either in the app or in Karabiner

> can't get the "copy on select" behavior

Think that's also possible, maybe not in iTerm, though how is this relevant when we're talking about keybinds? Obviously you can't have two functions per key 100% (below 100% you can have context-dependency like selection), so I don't understand what your perfect baseline is? No matter where control physically is you'll still have this issue that you can't use it to copy and cancel in the same context, so the fact that you'd need to resolve a conflict in Cmd is not an argument for any position.

> but Vim's isn't

But you can detect vim and use Cmd+C to pass Ctrl+C to it, so you'd retain vim's dumb behaviour just like you'd have with the original Ctrl+C, so there is no functional improvement, just ergonomic one (though this is more complicated)

>lose the app's bind, and you don't always have a way to get it back

you can always send the original Ctrl+C key event instead of "Copy" with a different keybind, so you'd retain that function

> You can't have it both ways. Either rebinding is easy or there are many clashes.

I can:

1. It's relatively easy in one case of the terminal app where you move Ctrl+X keybinds to Cmd+X and resolve a few conflicts

2. There are many clashes if you do it another way and move keys around at the OS level. And the amount of clashes is OS-dependent, and the reason it is due to Alt (including Mac's Alt)

> Great, the Alt you were talking about is for PC keyboards. That's what I thought; dunno why we had to go deep into like, API docs for macOS. Sometimes people goof! That's OK! Now I see what you meant here.

Unfortunately, you're still confused, but trying to persist in your mistake too hard to notice. I meant both keys (Mac's Alt and Win's Alt), and the fact that they serve different functions on different OS explains how "defaults matter even if you change them", that's how Alt (includings Mac's) is relevant

(also, it's not API docs, it's general user keyboard shortcuts help, why do you need to make even these things up?)

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