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On my mac, I need to be able to access special characters such as accents for editing purposes and for now I access this by holding a key down and then get the suggestions shortcut.
However, I would like to use the Vim mode in Sublime as well so moving around with h, j, k, l is quite tedious if I can't hold the key down to move faster.
Is there any way to only repeat a key when pressing it down in edit mode, or to have this behaviour only for h, j, k, l?
Thanks
Probably unsurprisingly, the press-and-hold-for-special-characters behavior is a macOS feature. It doesn't seem possible to change the behavior on the fly. You can adjust it per app like this:
defaults write com.sublimetext.4 ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
So the question becomes: how can you enter special characters in insert mode? In vanilla vim, you could use inoremap to replace, say, Option+l with "ł". However, NeoVintageous (which I hope you're using, not the deprecated Vintage mode) does not support remaps in insert mode. It claims to support digraphs, which would be another way of achieving this. However, the keyboard command to insert a digraph is Ctrl+k, which conflicts with one of the default Sublime Text key bindings on macOS. (The one to kill from the cursor to EOL, which is copied from Emacs and available in standard macOS text fields.) It's presumably possible to work around this, but I felt like Ctrl+k+l+/ was kind of wordy anyway.
Fortunately, there IS a fast, simple solution: a Sublime key remap. Open your user key bindings (Sublime Text > Preferences > Key Bindings) and add this one:
{ "keys": ["option+l"], "command": "insert", "args": {"characters": "ł"} }
Now Option+l will add the l-slash character to your document. If you need the special character this is replacing (the not sign "¬"), you can of course choose another binding.
I presume this is the one you want, since it's the only special character available for me when I press-and-hold any of the hjkl keys. But this approach will work equally well for any other characters you might want to insert.
Before you mark this question as a double, hear me out because I've looked around and I can't find anything that'll fix my issue.
In Vim for Windows (accessed through Powershell running from CMD in a console), backspace works fine. Pressing Shift (or Ctrl) + Backspace prints a weird looking I to the screen and presses Ctrl+C.
Using :set to see what the keycode for the backspace is on my Vim yields this: "Î^Cx". This makes sense considering the behavior described above. The interesting part is that this keycode obviously is for the normal backspace key. My problem however, doesn't appear when pressing backspace normally, which doesn't make sense to me considering that the normal keycode is this weird collection of characters. It only appears when combining backspace with the shift key.
I don't understand why the backspace key doesn't send ^H or ^?. I've heard that those two options are popular. I assume my terminal is messing this up in some way, but I don't understand why it would be sending a different keycode for backspace when the shift key is pressed.
Thanks in advance.
I solved this issue like this:
imap Î^Cy <BS>
In my (Windows) terminals, Î^Cy is shift-backspace and Î^Cz is ctrl-backspace, and I have remapped them both. If Î^Cx is shift-backspace in your terminal, which it seems like it is, try adding this to your vimrc file:
imap Î^Cx <BS>
I don't know why this happened in your configuration, but you should be able to use inoremap to make it do what you want.
Interactively, you can test my idea by typing this
:inoremap <hit control-V><hit shift-backspace> <hit control-v><hit backspace>
What this will do is create a non-recursive map in insert mode for the escape sequence generated by <shift-backspace> to the escape sequence generated by <backspace>.
In my case, the result looked like
:inoremap ^? ^?
because my <shift-backspace> produces the same sequence as <backspace>, but in your case it should produce something more useful for you.
Once you've figured this out, move it to your .vimrc without the colon, and that will hopefully fix your issue in a lasting way.
Are you having the same issue as me I wonder where this happens in Windows Powershell but doesn't happen in gvim or when you run vim under cmd. If so I think the other responders are correct that vim does nothing different with shift+BS than BS but the Powershell command running it is. It's not an answer, I don't know a way around it other than use gvim. But if you're trying to dig further I'd suggest it's Windows Powershell that's the issue (unless I'm wrong of course) rather than vim.
I want to be able to select columnar blocks using only the keyboard when I use GVim on Windows, but I do not seem to be able to do so when using gvim (7.2) on Windows XP. Edit: For convenience, it is preferable to make the selection with arrow keys as is commonly done in other versions of vi/vim.
In a terminal, when using vim, to define a block, one may select columnar blocks by pressing Ctrl-V and by conveniently moving the cursor with the arrow keys.
When using GVim on mswin, Ctrl-V is mapped to a paste operation. Every reference found on this topic mentions that on mswin, Ctrl-Q is set to act the same way that Ctrl-V works on other platforms, but this does not work for me.
After research indicated that the Ctrl-Q behavior is implemented through the inclusion of mswin.vim, it seemed that perhaps mswin.vim was not being loaded by GVim. mswin.vim is apparently loaded via _vimrc. It seemed that perhaps mswin.vim was not loading, so perhaps _vimrc was not setup correctly, but...
C:\Program Files\Vim\_vimrc exists contains:
source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim
behave mswin
C:\Program Files\Vim\vim72\mswin.vim exists and contains:
" Use CTRL-Q to do what CTRL-V used to do
noremap <C-Q> <C-V>
C:\Program Files\Vim\_vimrc should load since Edit | Settings Window in the GVim graphical menu loads this file for editing, and it is clear that C:\Program Files\Vim\vim72\mswin.vim is loading because one can insert a syntax error in that file and GVim will complain about it when it starts up (it was backed it up for testing and restored to prevent accidental corruption).
When Ctrl-Q is pressed, the cursor changes in the same way that it changes when you block select text using the mouse, but any cursor movement at this point causes the cursor to change back to a normal cursor. It does not matter whether one continues to hold Ctrl, Ctrl-Q, or not.
Edit: Ctrl-Q enters block selection mode as indicated by the cursor change since other cursor movement commands extend the block, however, the original intent of this question was to learn how to use the arrow keys (in the same manner that they are able to be used in other implementations of the editor) though this was not explicitly stated in the original, unanswered revisions of the question.
It is possible to visually select columnar blocks by pressing Alt while holding down the left-mouse button, but Alt during arrow key motion after pressing Ctrl-Q also does not work.
Research also seemed to indicate that pressing v in command-mode would enter visual-mode, and that perhaps this was relevant, but using this does not seem to help the situation.
C:\Program Files\Vim\vimfiles does not contain anything except an empty directory structure. C:\Documents and Settings\username does not contain vim configuration files, nor does C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents. Other C:\Documents and Settings\username locations, where application-specific or local settings are commonly stored, also appear not to have vim settings. The same is true for %HOMEDRIVE% and for the environment variables.
One way to visually select column blocks in GVim on Win32 using only the keyboard is to press Ctrl-Q, release it, then press and hold down the Shift key while using the arrow keys to select the column block.
Why Ctrl-Q columnar selection behaves this way is not known, but it does not really matter since the goal was to select column blocks using only the keyboard. In Vim, Shift is not used when using Ctrl-V to select blocks.
:help mswin does not mention this nuance of the CTRL-V alternative.
The best thing to do is to remove these lines from your vimrc. They are totally unecessary and change too many basic Vim features.
The noremap <C-Q> <C-V> in mswin.vim remaps the original command to Ctrl + Q.
If mswin.vim is included, after pressing Ctrl + Q, the indicated mode should switch to Visual Block, and any movement (e.g. j, l, w) extends the visual selection. If that doesn't work for you, you may have something interfering.
Are those movement commands itself remapped, or is there an autocmd on CursorMoved?! Try disabling your plugins (vim --noplugin) and most parts of your .vimrc.
Note that cursor keys do not normally constitute proper movement (and their use in Vim is frowned upon).
What you perceive as the right (and only) way to extend the selection (with shifted cursor keys) is just a consequence of :set selectmode=key, as done by :behave mswin.
TLDR: How do I get CapsLock to translate to "ShortNameDelimiter" in Mma 7?
I like pretty text in my mma notebooks, and often define functions as f[\[Alpha]_] =... so as to match the exact equation that I'm working with. As such, it involves a lot of Esc-letter-Esc sequences, and reaching for Esc every other stroke breaks my flow of typing.
Now, the CapsLock key is seldom used (I can't remember the last time I needed it), but conveniently placed (your pinky is right there!). Remapping it to Esc on vim worked wonders for me and I was wondering if there was a way to do the same in mma, without having to modify the system's keyboard layout.
I tried editing KeyEventTranslations.tr by adding the following in EventTranslations[{...
Item[KeyEvent["CapsLock"], "ShortNameDelimiter"]
but that had no effect. Is there another way to do it? Is CapsLock not the correct identifier? If it helps, I'm using Mma7 student version on a Mac.
Modifier keys are handled quite specially, and I doubt Mathematica will be able to override the system. You probably have to do this in a layer between Mathematica and the OS. BUT, it is possible to make the key behave different depending on the application you are in. Thus with a bit of work, it MAY be possible to have the capslock key behave differently only in Mathematica.
edit: I did not see you say which operating system you had, so I've added Mac instructions.
Windows
For example, if you have Windows, you can use the program called http://www.autohotkey.com/ . It specifically has a feature where you can bind a key to a script, specifically the following script:
How can a hotkey or hotstring be made exclusive to certain program(s)?
In other words, I want a certain key to act as it normally does except when a specific window is active.
In the following example, NumpadEnter is made to perform normally except when a window titled "CAD Editor" is active. Note the use of the $ prefix in "$NumpadEnter", which is required to let the hotkey "send itself":
$NumpadEnter::
IfWinNotActive, CAD Editor
{
Send, {NumpadEnter}
return
}
; Otherwise, the desired application is active, so do a custom action:
Send, abc
return
This next example is more pure than the above, but it will only work if the "CAD Editor" application is designed to ignore the NumpadEnter key itself. The tilde prefix (~) makes NumpadEnter into a non-suppressed hotkey, meaning that the NumpadEnter keystroke itself is always sent to the active window, the only difference being that it triggers a hotkey action. The ~ feature requires Windows NT/2k/XP.
~NumpadEnter::
IfWinNotActive, CAD Editor
return
; Otherwise, the desired application is active, so do a custom action:
Send, abc
return
To quote from "MRCS" in this forum post, you may find the following useful:
The first one I named CapsLockR.ahk and contains the following script:
CapsLock UP::Run C:\Documents and Sett...[path to script]...\CapsLock.ahk
The second one is named CapsLock.ahk and has this script:
GetKeyState, state, CapsLock, T
if state = D
SetCapsLockState, off
else
SetCapsLockState, on
exit
Thus worse comes to worst, if you are having trouble modifying the "Behave like Foo if Active Window = Mathematica else behave like Bar" script, you can tack on this to manually toggle the CapsLock state I think. Googling will also reveal more results.
Linux
I know that on Linux, you can use the program called xbindkeys to bind the CapsLock to a script, from which you can in turn call xdo if you detect Mathematica is one of the topmost windows (e.g. via Getting pid and details for topmost window , or xdotool getwindowfocus) or worse-comes-to-worst, you can just have a script which toggles your configuration between CapsLock -> xdotool key Escape, xdotool type "whatever", xdotool key Escape ("Mathematica mode") and "normal mode"... though that may prevent you from YELLING AT MATHEMATICIANS OVER INSTANT MESSAGING WHILE DOING MATHEMATICS. Unless you You may need to find some way to programatically toggle CapsLock, perhaps by creating a dummy CapsLock key (though that's an extreme hack, it is likely one can find some kind of library; perhaps Anybody know how to toggle caps lock on/off in Python? may be useful). (This issue could be avoided by using a key besides CapsLock, or not caring that you want to keep your CapsLock functionality; you could also just turn another key you never use into CapsLock.)
Mac
Mac may have similar tools. For example, you can get xdotool like on Linux above via the MacPorts project. I hear the CapLock key cannot normally be rebound as easily on Mac, so if you can deal with another key it may be much easier. But theoretically it should be possible...
If you wish to use CapsLock, you can use PCKeyboardHack http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/extra.html to remap the CapLock key to something which will tell OS X to let you remap the CapsLock. Then you remap it, then bind the key using Quicksilver to a script that makes calls xdotool to check if you're in Mathematica also also to issue the :esc:...:esc: if you are (see the Linux section of this answer). Otherwise you simulate a keypress on the CapsLock. But you remapped CapsLock! So you might need to make another dummy key you never use into the CapsLock key, and trigger a keypress on that using Cocoa libraries or a simple AppleScript. If you wish to pursue the CapsLock route, you might find Using Caps Lock as Esc in Mac OS X useful.
Is there a way to use an alt / option key as a meta key but still be able to use it to make some characters which need it?
For example, in my local keyboard layout:
# is alt + 2
\ is alt + shift + 7
| is alt + 7
etc.
So, if I set alt as a meta key, I can't make those characters anymore. On the other hand, using "press esc, release esc, press a key" to make meta key sequences makes my hands hurt.
Any Emacs users with international keyboards who have solved this, please give any tips you might have! :)
Edit:
It appears that I can set alt as a meta key and then add these kind of settings in inputrc: "\e2": "#" This works in the bash shell but it still won't work with Emacs though, so no good.
I use a Swedish keyboard in Mac OS X and use the following setup for Emacs.app:
First I have KeyRemap4MacBook installed and I have it setup to change the left Option key to Command.
I then have the following in my .emacs:
(setq mac-option-modifier 'none)
(setq mac-command-modifier 'meta)
This makes Emacs treat command as Meta and ignore Option. Since the left Alt/Option key is remapped to command, this makes it work lite meta while the right Alt/Option key still works for entering special characters like # [] and {}.
App specific Mac shortcuts like Cmd+C and Cmd+V no longer work, but global shortcuts like Cmd+space for Spotlight and Cmd+Tab for app switching do.
Update:
If you use iTerm2 as a Terminal, that has support for mapping only the left Alt/Option key to meta, which means you can still use the right AltGr/Option key for entering special characters. This also means you can use meta as normal inside Emacs running in the iTerm2 terminal.
I have a Swedish keyboard on my Mac and I'm using Aquamacs. Adding the two lines (attribution goes to Joakim Hårsman)
(setq mac-option-modifier 'none)
(setq mac-command-modifier 'meta)
in .emacs (and restarting Aquamacs) did the trick for me.
with iTerm2 you can map the left option key to ESC/meta and leave the mapping of the right option key to "normal". This way you can use the right option key to type accents etc.
Think about using a full featured Emacs for Mac OS X. I use Carbon Emacs but I believe others (say Aqua Emacs or X11 Emacs) would do the trick.
If you insist on using Emacs in a terminal you can use the C-x 8 prefix as a compose key. Try C-x 8 C-h to get a list of possibilities.
See http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS
Two work-arounds I use:
I use xterm running under X11.app. X11.app uses the command key as meta.
When running emacs in Terminal.app, I just use the rfc1345 input-method, which allows me to enter all kinds of crazy non-ascii characters without needing an option key.
Check out cmd-key-happy. This little app has worked wonders for me. It allows you to use command as meta, with exceptions that you can configure.
Author's info follows:
This program allows you to swap the command and alt (or option) keys
in any application, but in particular Terminal.app.
http://github.com/aim-stuff/cmd-key-happy
This is an old post but adding an alternatives for Robots to find.
I borrowed a couple of files from Aquamacs(emulate-mac-keyboard-mode.el, aquamacs-tools.el) that fixes the problem (I have a Italian-Pro keyboard) :
(defun aq-binding (any)
nil)
(load "~/.emacs.d/emulate-mac-keyboard-mode.el") ;; 'noerror
this provides:
few minor modes (emulate-mac-italian-keyboard-mode,
emulate-mac-french-keyboard-mode,
mulate-mac-swiss-german-keyboard-mode, etc)
a menu to play with all the options provided by Aquamacs
Tested with Emacs-23.3-universal-10.6.6 and seems to work ok for me.
Thanks Aquamacs for this, what about pushing this upstream if not already done.
It's worth thinking about the assumption behind the question. I mean to say that the real problem is making the characters that currently seem to need the option key. This problem can be solved without achieving simultaneous 'meta key + alt functionality'.
Let me explain: I have a similar problem. On my UK keyboard, shift-3 is mapped to the pound sign, £, which means that I generally need to hit option-3 to get the very useful # - a real problem in Terminal, where I use option as meta. However, I find most of the above solutions to be a little over-the-top. I don't want to change to another version of Emacs (eg. Aquamacs), to switch to a different Terminal application (eg. iTerm or xterm), or to install a key-remapping application (eg. KeyRemap4MacBook) all for the sake of one symbol! Perhaps that would suit some people, but I thought it was worth pointing out that if the problem is just one character, it can be solved with a nine-character text file.
With regard to my personal version of this problem, I find the simplest solution is to create a file called .inputrc in my home directory, consisting of the following single line:
"§": "#"
This re-maps the (to me, quite useless) § that can be found to the left of the 1 on the current Mac keyboard to the (almost indispensable) #. That suits me even better than the default setup, because I can now get # with a single keypress. If there were any other characters I needed to remap, it would just be a matter of adding an extra line for each one.
Anyway, that deals with how to get the missing character in the shell, but if you also want it in Emacs (which you didn't say but is probably the case) then you can add something like this to your .emacs file (where 35 is the ASCII for the character I happen to want, ie. #):
(global-set-key (kbd "§") 'insert-hash)
(defun insert-hash ()
(interactive)
(insert 35))
It might not be such a neat solution if there were dozens of characters that I routinely wanted to access via the option key, but there aren't.
I hope this helps somebody. As a mere weekend hacker, I ordinarily wouldn't dare post an answer to a question on Stack Overflow...
Special keyboard layout with option deadkey
My solution to this problem is a special keyboard layout I have written, U.S. custom. It provides an option deadkey that produces option combos without having to use the physical ⌥ Option modifier key. For instance, the character ⟨ç⟩ is produced as follows on a normal U.S. keyboard layout:
Hit ⌥ Option+c.
The U.S. custom keyboard layout adds a second way of producing ⟨ç⟩:
Hit ⇧ Shift+§ (the option deadkey), then release it, then hit c.
This works even in Terminal.app when Use option as meta key has been checked.
Note that the U.S. custom keyboard layout does two additional things:
It converts plain § into a ⎄ Compose key (so you could also produce ⟨ç⟩ by hitting §, then ,, then c).
It replaces the CapsLock mapping by a (significantly extended) U.S. Extended keyboard layout.
Remap option deadkey to right option modifier key
If you have a physical ANSI keyboard, then you lack the § key. In that case, I recommend assigning the § key to some other key, for instance to the right ⌥ Option modifier key. Install KeyRemap4MacBook, open ~/Library/Application\ Support/KeyRemap4MacBook/private.xml and paste the following code:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
<item>
<name>Send ISO Section for right Option</name>
<identifier>private.send_iso_section_for_right_option</identifier>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::OPTION_R, KeyCode::UK_SECTION</autogen>
</item>
<item>
<name>Send Shift+ISO Section for Shift+right Option (keep normal right Option without Shift)</name>
<identifier>private.send_shift_iso_section_for_shift_right_option</identifier>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::OPTION_R, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_R, KeyCode::UK_SECTION, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L</autogen>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::OPTION_R, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L, KeyCode::UK_SECTION, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L</autogen>
</item>
</root>
Then, open the KeyRemap4MacBook preference pane, hit ReloadXML and then select “Send ISO Section for right option”. Now, your ⌥ Right Option key is remapped to §, so while the U.S. custom keyboard layout is active, hitting ⇧ Shift+⌥ Right Option will give you the option deadkey state (hitting ⌥ Right Option without additional modifiers will give you a deadkey state equivalent to the option modifier.
If want to keep ⌥ Right Option when ⇧ Shift is not pressed (instead of the ⎄ Compose key), then select “Send Shift+ISO Section for Shift+right Option (keep normal right Option without Shift)” in the KeyRemap4MacBook preference pane (instead of “Send ISO Section for right Option”). Like that, only ⇧ Shift+⌥ Right Option will produce the option deadkey, while plain ⌥ Right Option will continue to work as an option modifier. You can even continue using ⌥ Right Option+⇧ Shift modifier combos (for instance ⌥ Right Option+⇧ Shift+c→⟨Ç⟩) as long as you don’t hit ⇧ Shift first.
The above answers mention ways to enter non-ascii input, but that's not really the problem here. The C-x 8 method lets you enter a bunch of non-ascii, but the problem is that you need the option key on mac just to enter the (ascii) character `|' (vertical bar)!
So how do you then enter stuff like M-| (region to shell command) when running emacs in ssh under Terminal.app? No way for it but to use the escape key, since | is option-7 and Terminal.app for some stupid reason won't let you use Cmc as meta :-(
(If anyone knows of a hack (SIMBL perhaps?) that actually does let Terminal.app use Cmd as meta, I'd be very grateful...)
The following solution works, is UNOBTRUSIVE and you don't need iTerm2 or Aquamacs or whatever.
Step 1
Keep "Use option as meta key" turned ON in the Terminal.app Settings.
Step 2
Edit ~/.inputrc (make it if it doesn't exist already), add the following line:
"\e3": '#'
This will remap ⌥ alt + 3 so that you produce a # character as expected in the terminal, instead of it annoyingly coming back with the prompt (arg: 3).
Step 3
Edit ~/.emacs, add the following line:
(global-set-key (kbd "M-3") "#")
This will remap ⌥ alt + 3 so that you produce a # character as expected inside emacs, instead of it annoyingly doing nothing.
Caveat 1, This is just 1 re-map. So ⌥ alt + ? (other keys) won't be remapped, e.g. you may wish to remap ⌥ alt + n to produce the tilde key ~. Simply follow the same steps outlined above obviously switching 3 with whichever key you need going forward.
Caveat 2, When you ssh into another box, you will face the same difficulties, but all you have to do there is edit the ~/.inputrc and ~/.emacs files on that box.
Caveat 3, I'm British, on a British MacBook. So I can't vouch for foreign MacBooks.
Aquamacs supports that, at least for my (french) keyboard. Once Aquamacs is installed (via drag'n'drop), you can go to Options -> Option, Command, Meta keys and choose an appropriate setting for your keyboard (in my case, ...Meta & French). I am not proficient with Emacs, but all the useful combinations I have tried seem to work ([, {, |, and so forth).
Supported keyboards, according to the menu items as of version 2.1, are :
British
US
Swiss-french
Swiss-german
Finnish
Italian-Pro
Italian
Spanish
French
German
I would guess the Aquamacs team would be grateful for any contribution, though, should your keyboard not appear in the list.
I bit the grass and started hitting the escape key instead. You get use to it...
I would like to mod this question up or something because i also use a Swedish keyboard where i must press alt+7 or alt+shift+7 to make | and \ respectively.
I also use Irssi in Terminal.app and these don't mix well.
I'm a long time vim user though so emacs is not an issue to me.
Isn't there some way to remap CMD to be Meta in Terminal.app?
So far i've been surviving by simply typing /wg N in Irssi because having those characters in my Terminal is much more important than IRC.
A solution would be worth gold to me though! :)
This is years late, but for people coming across this page whilst searching for a solution, as I did, I have decided to build one myself, one that doesn't require abandoning Terminal.app in favour of iTerm 2.
It is a simple status bar app that runs in the background and rewrites all left-Alt + $KEY key events to two key events in rapid succession, Esc, then $KEY; however, it only does this if Terminal.app is the focused application.
You can find it here at https://github.com/habibalamin/Metalt.
I assigned escape to the caps lock key and it works quite good. You can configure it easily in the mac system preferences > keyboard > modifier keys.
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/282092/236382