Standardised text editing behaviour across Mac applications
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09-06-2019 - |
Question
I've switched over to a Mac recently and, although things have been going quite well, the very different text-editing behaviours across applications is driving me insane.
Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, Apple-arrow, Ctrl-arrow, alt-arrow etc. quite often do different things depending on the application.
Is there a way to standardise this behaviour?
Solution
There are standards, but they are not based around what you're used to from windows. It drove me mad until I got over myself and decided to learn what the actual standards were. Since then I've been sold.
The ones I use:
- Command-Left/Right - Jump to start/end of line
- Can also do this with ctrl-a/e which is great if you're used to ssh
Command-Up/Down - Jump to top/bottom of text field or document
Option-Left/Right - Jump to start/end of word or previous/next word
These basically replace home/end/pgup/pgdown, and ctrl-left/right from the windows world.
I find this to be a massive win due to the fact I have a macbook pro and almost no laptops have proper home/end/pgup/pgdown keys - not needing them in OSX is a godsend
OTHER TIPS
And what's funny (and frustrating!) is that the Microsoft OS X apps (e.g. Entourage) use the Windows standards.
I develop on WinXP during the day but have an iMac at home, so it's confusing enough trying to switch modes between work and home. But then I have to remember if I'm writing an e-mail in Entourage, I need to revert back to Windows mode.
I can't think of any good reason why MS wouldn't follow the OS X keyboard standards...