Alt is the traditional BeOS default meta key On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 6:58 PM, Ari Haviv <arielbhaviv@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 6:04 PM, John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> This debate goes back to the beginning of computing and is equivalent >> to the debates about the one true line ending \r\n, \n, or \r. People >> familiar with Windows or Linux use ctrl as the default meta key and >> find cmd to be strange and people who are familiar with MacOS or BeOS >> are used to cmd being the default meta key and think that people who >> use ctrl are wierdos. When BeOS moved to the Intel platform they had a >> decision to make, either change the meta key to ctrl or use the >> quasi-equivalent key alt. The Be engineers chose alt and the >> Jean-Louis Gassee made a stink and made the engineers change it to >> ctrl. The engineers balked and created a map so that the default meta >> key could be changed to ctrl but left the default as alt. >> >> This is the situation that we enter. There is no good answer to this >> problem. Unfortunately no matter what gets chosen there are those who >> are going to be left out. I think the most appropriate answer is to >> leave the default as alt (or cmd on Macintosh computers) and allow the >> user to change the default to ctrl if they wish. I don't see how we >> can any do better than the Be engineers on this point. >> >> John Scipione > > What's wrong with making control the default and if you want alt, you > can switch to that? Because most future Haiku users will be used to > control as default, learned how to touch type with it and will > complain about it or told to look up a FAQ and that's something to be > minimized. > >