[loriwass]

One last thought: my hub and I found the David Pogue books (Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual and Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual) very helpful. Reading through these books only takes you so far--you have to have a Mac in front of you to try things out. Take the plunge--jump in, the water's fine!

[JSamJr]

On of my pet peeves is not being able to click in the URL section of Safari and instantly have the entire URL highlighted so I can type a different URL--I guess you have to keep clicking several times before that happens And I prefer the windows way that home key is the start of a line rather than the top of the document.


Type Command-L to select the entire URL. Then just paste or type in a different URL

[Alan]

I like that when I hit the down arrow it will scroll right to the end of your typing. That is so cool. If you have to fix a mistake before you continue typing you can get back to the end of the doccument with a few clicks of the down arrow.


Not that I make mistakes, I have heard that others do... :^0

Windoze doesn't allow that. (Scrolling to the end with the down arrow, not mistakes.) :^0 :^0

[Alan]

One thing that I am not 'appy with on me Mac is that when you have a repetitive task such as if you are typing and you come to something that you do repetively such as if you want to make a page break. You have to grab your mounse, select (in MS Word) "Insert" from the top, then select "break" from the menu, then select "page break". This is like pulling freakin teeth.

The other choice is to go to the help desk do a search for all the keyboard shortcuts, then read it or print all of the 10,000 pages (I exaggerate a bit I'm told) and paste them to the wall so you can search for the rest of the afternoon for the one you are looking for. Then you have to decipher the keys they show to figure out which key to use.

Either that or become a computer whiz and learn how to make macros or whatever they are called.

Jeepers creepers! :^0

However on those evil PeeCees ;) you don't even have to touch that cursed mouse :D because you simply have to select the letter that is bolded in the menu bar i.e. "F" for file plus a key (haven't used one for awhile so I forget what the equivalent of a command key is) and the menu comes down, then you select the next (bolded) letter from the menu you wish to use and select "alt" or whatever. You can flash through some fancy footwork.

[DMurray431]

That sounds more like a Microsoft problem.......... after all it is MICROSOFT WORD.

[mdawson]

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Alan wrote:

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I like that when I hit the down arrow it will scroll right to the end of your typing. That is so cool. If you have to fix a mistake before you continue typing you can get back to the end of the doccument with a few clicks of the down arrow.

Microsoft Word recognizes several key shortcuts for document navigation. If you go to Word help and enter ?Keys for editing and moving text,? you can see a complete list. Some of the more useful navigation key shortcuts are:
bq. shift end: move to the end of a line shift home: move to the beginning of a line command shift ↑: move to beginning of paragraph command shift ↓: move to end of paragraph command shift home: move to beginning of document command shift end: move to end of document.

[mdawson]

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Alan wrote:

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One thing that I am not 'appy with on me Mac is that when you have a repetitive task such as if you are typing and you come to something that you do repetively such as if you want to make a page break. You have to grab your mounse, select (in MS Word) "Insert" from the top, then select "break" from the menu, then select "page break".

As DMurray431 has already indicated, this has nothing to do with a Mac. OS X has nothing to do with the functionality of software. What you are describing is a issue with Microsoft Word.

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However on those evil PeeCees ;) you don't even have to touch that cursed mouse :D because you simply have to select the letter that is bolded in the menu bar i.e. "F" for file plus a key (haven't used one for awhile so I forget what the equivalent of a command key is) and the menu comes down, then you select the next (bolded) letter from the menu you wish to use and select "alt" or whatever. You can flash through some fancy footwork.

Yes, because the Mac has always has a true GUI-based operating system and therefore does not have features built into the OS that are the result of a legacy of having to do everything via keyboard navigation. Windows extensive keyboard navigation capabilities are legacy features from MS-DOS, which is a command line operating system. In MS-DOS-based applications the only means to navigate documents was to use any number of navigation keys combinations. In order to access menus or invoke an application?s functions the user typically had to hit a certain key or key combo to let the software know that they wanted to navigate and select from the applications menus; ctrl-key commands also existed to perform tasks similar to those that do and have always been present in GUI-based systems (e.g., ctrl-S to save a document).

That functionality remained in Windows once it left its application suite roots and became MS-DOS? GUI in Windows 3. It has remained in all versions of Windows since.

Having certain keyboard shortcuts can enhance productivity because the user can quickly press two keys in unison to invoke a function (e.g., those for copying, pasting, cutting, saving/opening files, etc.). The type of menu navigation that Windows supports is the antithesis of having a GUI in the first place. In the time that it takes to evoke the menus with the keyboard then navigate to the operation you want in the same manner, you could have simply used a simple keyboard shortcut (e.g., ctrl-c, ctrl-v, etc.) or access the menu with the mouse. Using the keyboard method is counterproductive.

[Alan]

I agree partially that it is a MS Word problem, but the same issue is true in the Apple word processing program Pages, from what I can see, although I admit I have used it only a few times. I started using Word because I was not interested in learning yet another program and I needed it for my work stuff.

I started with Windoze 3.0 and Word Perfect. What a pain. Then I got Lotus Ami Pro. I was in ectasy because it had WYSIWYG and I believe it was also a GUI. I wanted no part of keyboard shortcuts back then. I got an Apple when a friend talked me into it. Liked it from the get go. I was addicted to the GUI until one day a computer whiz buddy said to me "aha I see you are addicted to the mouse" When he explained what he meant, I realized that there are lots of times when KB shortcuts beat the snot out of grabbing the mouse moving it, clicking etc.. Although I don't have Carpel Tunnel, I find using the mouse (some days) to be like pulling teeth. I tried a track ball and it was not my cup 'a te. I used Windoze at work and they loaned me a laptop, so that's when I really got onto KB shortcuts especially for repetitive tasks.

I like the GUI, but it has limitations. Seems to me that Apple could make the KB shortcuts simple like it is in Windoze or maybe they have and I am the last to know... :^0

Funnily enough I remember one secretary I worked with who absolutely refused to use KBS of any kind. :p

Part of the reason that I posted this was to see if I could find out any secret method of understanding how the KB shortcuts in Apple are setup, because some pretty clever people hang out here on this website. I know all the usuals like command, a c v b i z x p u o f q and w but I would like to have more indepth ones that you can figure out easily. (I realize there is a list)

[mdawson]

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I agree partially that it is a MS Word problem, but the same issue is true in the Apple word processing program Pages, from what I can see, although I admit I have used it only a few times. I started using Word because I was not interested in learning yet another program and I needed it for my work stuff.

Well if you are still referring to an operation such as entering a break in a document it makes sense that a keyboard shortcut does not exist because it is neither a simple nor a commonly used operation. As you stated, you have to insert the break and select the type of break you want in either Word or Pages. While inserting breaks may be something that you and even I regularly do, it is not a feature that is used a great deal by the average person.

Many more advanced applications will allow you to add custom keyboard shortcuts for functions that are a part of your regular workflow. Word has a keyboard customization feature, Tools > Customize > Customize Keyboard?, so you can add keyboard shortcuts to your heart?s content. :) I am not sure if the Windows version can do this, but I would not doubt that it can.

Do realize that by performing this type of customization, every shortcut you add reduces the point of having a GUI in the first place. The underlying principle of a graphical user interface is to not have to recall a bunch of keyboard commands to invoke application functions. It is for that reason that good software developers do not create custom keyboard shortcuts for every single function of their software and most will not add much more beyond the universal set: New, Open, Close, Save/Save As?, Print, Undo/Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All, Find, Replace and Quit.

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I like the GUI, but it has limitations. Seems to me that Apple could make the KB shortcuts simple like it is in Windoze or maybe they have and I am the last to know...

Again, the Mac OS has always been a GUI-based operating system and it is therefore highly improbable that Apple will do something as backwards and counterproductive as support the type of arcane keyboard-based navigation that is still present in Windows. Windows is continuing to support a legacy functionality that comes from its roots predating the use of a graphical user interface on IBM PC compatible computers. A dramatic difference exists between having keyboard shortcuts, which as the term implies is a shortcut for invoking a particular function, and adding a universal feature that reverses the purpose of having a GUI in the first place.

The Mac OS has never been a CLI-based operating system and Apple has no legitimate reason to introduce obsolete features that were required in such operating systems. If you really want to use your Mac as if it is a 1970/80s era CLI-driven desktop, I am sure that there are third-party utilities out there that will accommodate you.

[Alan]

Mdawson

At the risk of entering into a silly argument, I am not suggesting that computers should go back to steam generated tubes. I am suggesting that the PeeCee system of CLI has serious advantages. My friends who work in the Computer Science department of a major Canadian university all use Linux and Linux is CLI as far as I can see. I see them bangin away at the keys and only rarely using the mouse. Linux seems to have the GUI, but they continue with the old because whether you like to admit it or not CLI is easier, if you chose to take the little bit of time to learn it. It is not always easier obviously. GUI is generally easier for newbies and I believe it contributes to CTS. (hey I snuck an acronym in there)(median neuropathy at the wrist or Carpel Tunnel Syndrome)

I like my Apple but I am not such an Apple weenie that I canot see room for improvement. If developers are such snoots that they are embarassed at relooking at something left behind, well they will be left in the dust by a forward looking person. Computers are used by a very wide group of people and to simply say that one size fits all is silly.

If you look at various Apple programs you will see that they do indeed include CLI in a lot of places, but what I am saying and I repeat there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the system they have settled on. I am hoping that someone out there can enlighten me.... frig with a life time in the Himalayas..... :^0

I also suspect that someone somewhere reads these posts with an eye to improving their product and if they don't they should. Consumer focus groups normally cost a fortune and this forum is close to free.

[mdawson]

Alan, this is not a silly argument nor is it about being an Apple weenie. I have been using computers for nearly 30 years, I am intimately familiar with command line interfaces, I use UNIX to run SAS on a regular basis and I actually understand why the techniques that must be employed in a CLI should not be carried over into a GUI. From a software standpoint, you are requesting that Apple go back to using vacuum tubes. As one of my old chemistry professors used to say, ?Knowing how to do something the hard way does not make it the easy way.?

The fact that you see people hacking away at Linux?s command prompts is irrelevant because they are using the command line interface where the mouse would serve no purpose. The same goes for when I work in UNIX, the mouse is useless except for controlling the window of the SSH session. Linux users are obviously going to be hacking away at the keyboard when the only point of entry for doing anything is a command prompt. Test-based software run in that environment (e.g., vi, pico, etc.) cannot be controlled with a mouse and requires keyboard navigation. If utilizing the functionality that was employed by text-based programs developed on pre-GUI desktops were so much better we would be using the equivalent of the Apple II?s AppleDOS on Macs and not the Mac OS or Windows.

GUIs are better than CLIs, period. No one is looking at what was left behind because that type of navigation is obsolete and unnecessary. Apple has never so much as attempted to implement Windows archaic keyboard navigation schemes in 24 years of Mac development. Why? Because Apple chose to use a GUI in order to abandon archaic methods of operating software. The core principle of a GUI is to not have to resort to working that way. It is a testament to how poor most NIX GUIs are that they are not in wide use amongst NIX users.

Also, you attempt to justify obsolete computer interfacing by bringing carpal tunnel syndrome into the discussion shows that you do not understand that condition?s probable cause. Excessive typing is just as likely to cause CTS as using a mouse. CTS is a repetitive stress injury that can be caused by the improper placement of the arms, wrists and hands when performing any computer input activity.

And what Apple programs incorporate a CLI other than Terminal, which Apple intentionally buried because most users have no need for it? Mac software runs within a GUI and I have yet to run across a Mac application that requires or gives the user the option to type in commands to perform application functions. Of course, based on your logic, a modern WYSIWYG CAD package such as Vectorworks should incorporate AutoCAD?s antiquated command line so that people can waste time typing commands to draw object on screen instead of just drawing them.

[Alan]

Mdawson
My reference to CLI was used in a different sense than what you meant from what I can surmise. What I was referring to is the use of simultaneously touching two keys, one of which is either command, option or control etc. and the other is an alphanumeric combination. You used the acronym CLI and I assumed its meaning after checking Wikipedia on it's meaning as I had no idea what it meant. I remember pure CLI and have no desire to return to that in it's pure form as you explained. We use it at work on Windoze (18)98 on an ancient program to update the checklist on our aircraft.

Apple programs are full of these CLI (by my understanding of the term CLI) choices now as you and I showed with such choices as "command x" for "cut to clipboard" etc..

To go to strictly CLI would be a huge retro jump and is not what I am suggesting.

What I am suggesting is that the system is still available on PeeCees in a very user friendly format. How and why it got there I understand and appreciate your explanation. Your explanation doesn't change the fact that the way they have it setup is user friendly.

Frinstance in Safari under Edit, Special Characters there is three keys you are to do simultaneously. The first one means what? It is not printed on any keyboard. It is a code for something that someone dreamed up. What is so difficult about printing that on the key itself so someone could figure it out?

Why not just hold down the "control" or "alt" etc. then the series of bolded letters like on PeeCees? Simple.

In Pages under Edit, Paste and Match Style You'd have to be a contortionist to key those four in simultaneously.

In Pages under format, what does the up arrow indicate? It's not on any key on the board. Is it a shift, caps lock or up scroll arrow key?

In Pages under Format, Font and Text there are lots of KBS, but under Table there isn't any. Why?

GUI has limitations like if you were to put every available icon on the screen there would be no room to type a letter. Also some of the icons or buttons have a graphical representation on them that suggests the programmer must have been on some good "weed" at the time... :^0

You quoted one of your Old chemistry professors as saying “Knowing how to do something the hard
way does not make it the easy way.”
I do not see the PeeCee modernized version of the CLI as the hard way. You do. That's great. I see a combination of CLI and GUI as being what I like. That's what this thread was started about in the first place and I used it as a jumping off point to state something about Apples that I am disappointed about. Not everyone thinks like you or I do and that's OK.

As far as CTS goes it can be caused by various things in various people as we are all unique in our way of operating. Some people get it from typing, some from other repetitive operations. One friend of mine got a bad case from years of playing the guitar. He was excellent. Too bad as first he got CTS then it degenerated into cancer (smoker) and now he is not around. Some people love the mouse but I am not one of them, and particularly Apple mice. They were designed with "form above function" going back to the one key iMac Bondi mouse that I suffered through. I find the wireless mouse with no defined buttons a PITA. You have to actually look at it or the wrong function is activated.

What little time I have spent watching my friends use Linux suggests to me that they have GUI and CLI included in the programs. They do use the mouse to click buttons or icons.

[mdawson]

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My reference to CLI was used in a different sense than what you meant from what I can surmise. What I was referring to is the use of simultaneously touching two keys, one of which is either command, option or control etc. and the other is an alphanumeric combination. You used the acronym CLI and I assumed its meaning after checking Wikipedia on it?s meaning as I had no idea what it meant.

Do you think you should know what you are arguing about before you get into a debate? ;) :)

You most definitely did not know what CLI (command line interface) meant if you were confusing an interface with keyboard shortcuts (e.g., command c, command x, etc.). I do not have an issue with keyboard shortcuts in a GUI, as 1) they have always been there and 2) they are as their name implies, shortcuts. As I stated in a previous post, there is a core set of universal keyboard shortcuts that operate across applications and platforms; with few exceptions the same exact alphanumeric key codes are used in OS X, Windows and even some *NIX GUIs save the different modifier key (e.g., command on a Mac, control/ctrl elsewhere).

I almost always use the universal keyboard shortcuts. In some applications where shortcuts exist for functions that I regularly need, I use a number of application-specific keyboard shortcuts. While keyboard shortcuts (nee, control codes in text-based applications) predate GUIs, the fact that they can often invoke and operation faster than going to a menu is why GUIs have always include them. It only takes a split second to hit a simple two-key combination. But as a part of good GUI design, most programs do not add too many custom keyboard shortcuts by default beyond the universal set, because the limited number of letters in the alphabet make it difficult to have sensible shortcuts for everything.

Even in that small set there are conflicts. ?C? is reserved for copy, so cut is ?X? and close is ?W?. ?P? is used for printing, so pasting is ?V?. ?U? is used to enable underlined text, so ?Z? is used for undo.

On the other hand, as I mentioned before, many higher-end applications will allow the user to add their own keyboard shortcuts. The support or lack of support for custom keyboard shortcuts rests solely with a given application?s developer and not the OS developer. The Mac OS has never been any different from Windows in regards to keyboard shortcuts. Both operating systems support keyboard shortcuts equally.

What you were writing about previously was not shortcut keys, but keyboard-based menu navigation. That feature in Windows is a holdover from pre-Windows 3.0 and text-based software operating on (IBM) PCs that required such functionality to compensate for the lack of a mouse. A keyboard shortcut, particularly the simple functions such as cutting, copying and pasting, can be performed in a fraction of a second. Keyboard menu navigation can take several seconds, as you first have to press the menu key, followed by the letter key for the menu containing the command you wish to execute and then a third and sometimes fourth key press to finally invoke the command.

Keyboard menu navigation is obsolete. The Mac has never had such navigation, and never will, and Microsoft is long overdue for removing keyboard menu navigation from Windows.

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Frinstance in Safari under Edit, Special Characters there is three keys you are to do simultaneously. The first one means what? It is not printed on any keyboard. It is a code for something that someone dreamed up. What is so difficult about printing that on the key itself so someone could figure it out?

That symbol represents the option key, it is on Mac keyboards in the UK and, if I recall correctly, other parts of Europe. I cannot remember if it was on the original Mac keyboards in the US back in the 1980s, but I have always known it represented the option key long before I ever saw a British keyboard in Macworld UK. Why Apple uses that character in the US when it is not on the keyboard is anyone?s guess.

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Why not just hold down the "control" or "alt" etc. then the series of bolded letters like on PeeCees? Simple.

You mean like option command T, which I the keyboard shortcut for the Special Characters function you just mentioned. The modifier keys on a Mac are different, but they serve the same function as ctrl and alt on a Windows PC. And Windows lists keyboard shortcuts in the same way as OS does with the shortcut right justified in the menu after the command it invokes.

The underlined, not bold, letters in menu items represent the key you press when you use the obsolete keyboard navigation method. For instance, to invoke Select All you would have to press and release the menu key to activate the menu bar, then press and release the E key to select and open the Edit menu and then finally press and release the A key to invoke Select All. By the time the user does all that typing they could have just used the mouse or simply pressed ctrl + A.

Alan wrote:
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In Pages under Edit, Paste and Match Style You'd have to be a contortionist to key those four in simultaneously.

I do not use pages so I have no idea what the specific key combination is, but I would guess that it is option shift command key just like the complex alt shift ctrl key shortcuts that appear in some Windows applications. So what is your point? It is the result of shortcut overload due to conflicts as I mentioned above. Developers generally like to have the letter key make sense and there are only so many ways to use a single letter to represent different commands. Again, this is why GUIs are superior to the alternative and Windows is no different from the Mac OS in terms of complex keyboard shortcuts.

Alan wrote:
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In Pages under format, what does the up arrow indicate? It's not on any key on the board. Is it a shift, caps lock or up scroll arrow key?

The outlined up arrow is the universal symbol for the shift key that goes back to the typewriter era. Since when is the Caps Lock or any arrow key ever been used as a modifier key? You are really grasping for straws here and you are only demonstrating why keyboard shortcuts should be kept to a minimum.

A question for you: why does Windows use Alt F4 to quit an application instead of something sensible like ctrl Q like the Mac?s command + Q? The ?Q? key is not reserved for any menu functions in Windows, so why is Microsoft using a function key for quitting? Oh yeah, because it is a pre-Windows 95 holdover.

Alan wrote:
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I do not see the PeeCee modernized version of the CLI as the hard way.

You acknowledged that you did not know what CLI meant and looked it up yet you have continued to misuse the term throughout your post. Windows has not ?modernized? the CLI and the command line interface is obviously not the issue here. What we are discussing is not a combination of a CLI and a GUI. You are erroneously stating that OS X differs from Windows in the handling of keyboard shortcuts and suggesting that Apple should implement keyboard menu navigation despite the fact that it is the antithesis of good GUI design.

If you want to have 5000 keyboard shortcuts for Word, then go into the customization dialog and create them. But you are completely incorrect in your assessment that using the keyboard is better than using a mouse and not a single UI design guru would ever take your position on this matter. Keyboard shortcuts can enhance a GUI to a point. Keyboard menu navigation is an anachronism that does not belong in a GUI.

Alan wrote:
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What little time I have spent watching my friends use Linux suggests to me that they have GUI and CLI included in the programs. They do use the mouse to click buttons or icons.

It is clear from these posts that you really have no idea of what you Linux-using friends are doing as you clearly cannot tell the difference between a keyboard shortcut and a type of user interface. Linux is the desktop version of UNIX and like UNIX it is primarily a command line driven operating system. GUI interfaces exist that run on top of UNIX (e.g., X11, SunOS, etc.) and Linux (e.g., KDE, etc.) and those NIX user interfaces operate just as Windows and the Mac OS do. The difference is that NIX users tend to be highly trained computer users that will often turn to the CLI to perform more advanced system operations that often have not been implemented in the GUI. NIX users do not* use the command line to perform operations within applications.

For instance, when I use SAS, I have to connect to the University server to write, edit, compile and debug the code in the CLI; although I now prefer to use TextWrangler via an SFTP connection for generating and editing code because pico, which is a text-based UNIX application, can only be navigated strictly from the keyboard and is thus not a productive means to write code. As I connect using X11 from my Mac, I can render graphs from SAS in the X11 GUI, but it returns to the CLI when I finish looking at the graphs.

When I had a course project in SAS AF to write SCL code, the now obsolete SAS user interface language for creating SAS database front-end applications, everything had to be done through the X11 GUI using Exceed; I can do it directly in X11 on my Mac as OS X is UNIX. Using X11 in that way was no different from using OS X and Windows. The only thing the CLI was used for was to open the X11 environment on the Windows PCs that we were developing the code on. All f our SCL coding was performed in the X11 text editor just as it would be done in MS Word, Pages, TextEditor, TextWranger, WordPad or any other GUI-based text editor. The CLI could not be used and no one on my team was wasting time trying to use the keyboard navigating menus when they could simply use the mouse or any of the universal keyboard shortcuts that are also recognized by X11.

Please learn the difference between an interface and a feature. :)

[Alan]

I think if you look back on the posts I was explaining Keyboard Shortcuts when you started invoking GUI, CLI, SAS, SSH, CIA, and the FBI.

I appreciate your explanations, but not the condescention.