[muglo] Re: Survey - what do home/end do on your particular Mac

On 1/23/06, Martin Albinger <max@xxxxxx> wrote:
> Wrt Open-apple I stand (or is that typed?) corrected. It was what it
> was when I started, so it was.  But the original A][e had a built in
> keyboard so I don't think I would have noticed the adb bus (or even
> cared for that matter).

I'd be surprised if the ][e had the ADB. I suspect it was the IIGS
that introduced it first and was later introduced to the Mac SE. I
think it was only in more recent years that Apple might have started
referring to it as the Apple key (or do they even refer to it as the
Apple key?).

Hmm. Just looked in Safari's help and it refers to the clover leaf key
(using the clover leaf symbol) which I guess means they consider it
the command key.

> > I think I've just always been willing to ignore that misbehaviour on
> > Apple's part (ignorance is bliss, I guess). Time to get Apple to fix
> > the error of their ways ;-).
>
> Is it an error or just another UI choice?  Home to be means go to the
> top, end well means the end of whatever I'm in.  Adding the tag 'line'
> makes it 'home line' and 'end line' which to me means top of document
> and end of document; or as you suggest the home end of the line and the
> end end of the line.

Well, OK, it's a UI choice but not one that I noticed. I don't pretend
to completely understand why I never noticed the problem before. I
have _always_ used home-end to take me to beginning/end of lines (as
is expected behaviour) _on the Macintosh_.

It could be just like the up-down-left-right arrows. Apple introduced
them on the ADB keyboards (I don't think the original Mac 128/512/Plus
keyboard had the arrow keys) and few applications supported them for
the _longest_ time. It was one of those strage schizophrenic UI
decisions that I never understood -- they were probably trying to
differentiate themselves from DOS, but, in doing so they limited the
utility of four very prominent keys.

I also never really used the "six" extra keys on the extended keyboard
until MS Word (5.1 or was that 6.0?) started supporting them fully in
1994 - page up/down, home/end, delete and, well, help has ALWAYS been
a useless key (fortunately Apple has FINALLY disabled it).

As for what is the better use? It is worth asking whether it's worth
having unpredictable behaviour for non-Mac users [1.1] that's
historically accurate for Mac users [1.2], or whether  non-Mac users
(who are Apple's new targets) should find predictable behaviours where
possible?

[1.1] For the 95% of non-Mac users and for the 98% of users who won't
understand Apple's "special" way of doing home/end

[1.2] Not really since Apple was schizophrenic about the six extra
keys for the longest time

> > PS For anyone else out there who expects "proper" behaviour (i.e. home
> > goes to start of line/end goes to end of line) from their Home/End
> > keys... it's possible to reprogram them. Just ask, or look in the
> > Mac-Canada (lowendmac.net) archives for this past week.

http://the.taoofmac.com/space/HOWTO/Switch%20To%20The%20Mac
or
http://www.aaronadams.net/index.php/2005/03/01/change_the_behavior_of_the_h=
ome_and_end_

To change the Mac's home and end keys to behave like Windows, create
a text file named /Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict (if the
folder doesn't exist, go ahead and create it) and add these lines:

/*Home/End keys like Windows */
{
"\UF729" =3D "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; /*home*/
"\UF72B" =3D "moveToEndOfLine:"; /*end*/
"$\UF729" =3D "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /*shift + home*/
"$\UF72B" =3D "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /*shift + end*/
}

Logout and login, and the home and end keys will work like Windows.

PS You can create the file in ~/Library/KeyBindings and it'll work too
(that way changes you make to the file will only be felt in the user
account, rather than the whole OS).

Eric.
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