{"id":10,"date":"2008-03-13T03:32:06","date_gmt":"2008-03-13T08:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/13\/useful-mac-os-x-text-editing-shortcuts\/"},"modified":"2008-11-29T15:12:22","modified_gmt":"2008-11-29T20:12:22","slug":"useful-mac-os-x-text-editing-shortcuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/13\/useful-mac-os-x-text-editing-shortcuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Useful Mac OS X Text-Editing Shortcuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is a handful of lesser-known Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts that I’ve found to be very<\/em> useful for working with text. They work in all standard text-fields, which means they work in most<\/em> programs. Sadly, they don’t work in Microsoft products, and a few other apps that use non-standard text fields.<\/p>\n

option<\/strong> = you will see the mouse cursor into a + , and you can now select columns of text! Unfortunately it only seems to work in editable text-fields, which is a great shame.<\/p>\n

ctrl + d<\/strong> = forward delete, even if you don’t have it on your MacBook’s keyboard.<\/p>\n

ctrl + a<\/strong> = Go to the beginning of the line the insertion-point is on.<\/p>\n

ctrl + e<\/strong> = Go to the beginning end of the line line the insertion-point is on.<\/p>\n

ctrl + k<\/strong> = “kill the current line”, deletes everything from the right of the insertion point to the next newline. This is very useful in Terminal, because you can delete the tail of a long command<\/p>\n

command + delete<\/strong> = “Delete To Beginning Of Line”. Just like ctrl+k, but backwards, not forwards. (It even puts the killed text on the yank-pasteboard — don’t worry if that makes no sense, it’s an emacs<\/a>-ism I don’t find useful.)<\/p>\n

And yes, that’s ctrl, not command, because these are shortcuts inherited from the old UNIX text-editor emacs<\/a>. There are more emacs “key bindings” that are available, but I have never found them useful. This long list of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts<\/a> includes them.<\/p>\n

command + ctrl + d<\/strong> = look up the word under the mouse in the dictionary. I can’t believe that other operating systems haven’t done this for decades, it’s that useful.<\/p>\n

It is unfortunate when programs use text-fields that do not support commands the operating system should give to every application. It’s always a mistake. Fundamentally, not supporting ctrl+a (go to beginning) is no different then not supporting command+c (copy).<\/p>\n

If you find these commands useful, please teach them, and let developers know it’s a problem when you can’t use them. That will improve computing for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a handful of lesser-known Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts that I’ve found to be very useful for working with text. They work in all standard text-fields, which means they work in most programs. Sadly, they don’t work in Microsoft products, and a few other apps that use non-standard text fields. option = you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10,9,8],"tags":[86,235,236,237],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-macosx","category-tips","category-unix","category-usability","tag-command-line","tag-emacs","tag-terminal","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}