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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.
I always use numeric keypad as arrows, as I find it more convenient than using an separate arrow pad. Until recently I used a tool Karabiner Elements, but it stopped functionning at Big Sur.
Yes, The Karabiner developer is working on that issue, but it will be better to solve it without relying on a third-party tool.
It will be enough for me to either remap Xcode, or (which is preferred) to change key bindings in the system, using a tool like hidutil.
Xcode's Preferences - Key Binding has a section Text - Section. When I try to modify the binding for say Move Down by pressing Down arrow on numeric keypad it comes up as '2'. Now whereever I press '2', on keyboard or numeric keypad, it always works as Move Down which is certainly not what I am after.
About hidutil. I couldn't find a good manual or any example of keyboard mapping.
Any help?
Had another look at this article. Here is the answer:
hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000005A,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000051},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000060,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000052},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000005C,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000050},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000005E,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000004F},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000005F,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000004A},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000061,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000004B},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000059,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000004D},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000005B,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000004E},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000062,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000049},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000063,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000004C}]}'
Still can't fugure out, how to do (if possible) complex mapping with modifier keys (eg Ctrl+PgUp to Home), but that's another topic.
I understand that Mac has some Emacs keybindings enabled by default (e.g. Ctrl+A move to beginning of line etc.). If I open TextEdit for example I can navigate like in Emacs.
But when I try Alt+F or Alt+b for move to next word or last word it does not work. It prints out ƒ and ∫ instead.
Is there a way to jump words instead?
I think that I did not tinker with the keybindings and I use the US layout on a german keyboard.
If you want to re-enable them for the terminal
Terminal -> Preferences -> Keyboard
Check 'Use Option as Meta key'
my iTerm2 version is 3.1.6, profile -> keys -> set Esc+
Maybe one of these helps? (I don't use OSX myself, so I can't test anything).
http://blog.sensible.io/2012/10/19/mac-os-x-emacs-style-keybindings-everywhere.html
http://aufflick.com/blog/2006/01/10/emacs-keybindings-everywhere
Summary from first URL:
Create file ~/Library/Keybindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict with the following content and restart all apps.
{
"~d" = "deleteWordForward:";
"^w" = "deleteWordBackward:";
"~f" = "moveWordForward:";
"~b" = "moveWordBackward:";
}
I'm a little confused if you're talking about the keys (within different apps on OS X) or specifically Emacs. On OS X the standard keys you would use to jump between words is:
option/alt + Left Arrow or Right Arrow
If it's specific to Emacs for OS X:
For Terminal.app, starting from Snow Leopard: Go to Preferences > Settings > Keyboard > Use option as meta key.
For iTerm: Go to Manage Profiles > Keyboard profiles > (your profile) > Option Key as…
If you want to use Option key for both international characters and
Meta key in Emacs, see info below for iTerm 0.10.x patch and/or binary.
Alt-b and Alt-f for navigating by word also works for your shell now.
UPDATE: The link the original website providing the patch is no longer online, however I was able to retrieve the cached information from the archive.org:
OSX + terminal + Meta key + national characters
Quite a mix, right? If you’re user of one of those keyboard layouts that have hidden some non-ISO1 characters under Option-key shortcuts and you use command line – read on, I might have a treat for you.
As it stands today, if you’re OSX user, and would like to use your Option (Alt) keys for both national characters and Meta-* shortcuts, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise – you can’t. It’s one or the other: both iTerm and Terminal.app allow you to flip between Option keys role, but neither of them allows you to use Option for both. Under Linux, it’s customary to use left Alt for Meta-* and right Alt for any national characters you might require. Same goes for Windows. Of course you can just train yourself in using ESC key in a prefix manner, but that’s avoiding the real problem.
Getting annoyed by this state of things, and faced with some Emacs usage, I decided to take advantage of the fact that iTerm is opensource software, and see if I can make a tiny change, to cater for my needs. Surely enough, after ~25 minutes I got a trivial patch: just changed the mask that iTerm uses for detecting that Option key is pressed down. It took few hours and 5 chapters of Cocoa book, to turn that into fully-fledged option in Keyboard Profiles section of iTerm. This was my first foray into lands of Objective C; while I came back victorious, I don’t see myself writing anything bigger in Objective C in nearest future.
Here’s the meat: ( https://sourceforge.net/p/iterm/patches/44/ )
“right Option is Normal” patch;
full patch allows you to pick which keys should be treated as Meta (both, only left, only right);
The patches were made against 0.10.x branch, at revision
1871.
Once you have the binary, launch it and go to Bookmarks > Manage profiles > Keyboard profiles. If you select a keyboard profile, you should see a new dropdown at the bottom of the keybindings list.
The options should be pretty much self-explanatory. The configuration shown above is the one I’m using — this way I get all Meta-* shortcuts with my left Option key, and all Polish characters with right Option key. Which is the way it Should Be™ :)
I haven’t heard from iTerm authors yet, so I have no idea whether this patch is going to merged upstream or not. I’ve been using my patched version for almost week and a half now, and nothing major exploded. Yes, iTerm is slower to redraw the screen on larger terminals (say, 130×80), but there are certain features (like 256 colors support) that make up for that.
more info: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS
On iTerm2 3.0.15, go to:
Preferences -> Default -> Keys tab ->"Left option() key acts as:"
and change the value to:
+Esc
Solved this at the OS level as follows,
⟶ System preferences
⟶ Keyboard
⟶ Input Sources Tab
⟶ + at bottom left
⟶ Others in the left panel
⟶ add and select Unicode Hex Input from right panel
✓ Mac no longer prints anything on alt+letter|number
✓ enter unicode characters via alt+[code]
✅ the OS does not grab alt key shortcuts!
You should use KeyRemap4MacBook. In the Emacs Mode section, you will find numerous options to use the Option key as Meta including Option+BF to Option+Left/Right.
However, if you're a hardcore Dvorak user like myself who wants to use key bindings such as M-b and M-f using the original Dvorak layout, there's a problem. You can only "move backward/forward one word" in QWERTY layout. I use version 8.4.0 so I don't know about the latest version for Mavericks.
I use BetterTouchTool. Works like this:
Basically remaps Option-F and Option-B to Option-Right and Option Left, and I turned this on for any apps that I want the shortcut in, e.g., Firefox, Obsidian, Slack. Works great!
For Hyper you can fix the option key by setting the following configuration to your ~/.hyper.js file:
module.exports = {
config: {
modifierKeys: { altIsMeta: true }
}
}
source
Emacs 24.1 was just released, and I once again feel inclined to use the "real" Emacs (Cocoa GUI version, from http://emacsformacosx.com) instead of Aquamacs. The only thing keeping me in Aquamacs is this:
In AquamacsEmacs, Option (Alt) is mapped to Meta - however, because
Option is used to input a lot of non-ASCII characters such as ü or £
on a variety of keyboards, the special character input methods take
precedence by default. You can deselect “Option key produces only
special characters” in the Options menu to use Option as Meta, or you
set the variable mac-command-modifier to ‘meta - you will lose
functionality, of course. If you use a non-English keybboard layout,
the emulation modes might be just what you want. While they leave the
Option key mapped to Meta, they will allow you to input many common
characters ([,],{,},\, etc.) directly with the Option key, just as you
would otherwise. You can find them in the Options → Option Key menu -
or use, e.g., M-x emulate-mac-german-keyboard-mode.
This question speaks about the same issue, and one of the answers is "use Aquamacs".
So in Aquamacs, I can use Option key as Meta and everything is fine, I can type e.g. [ with option(alt)-8 and still use alt as meta when I add this into my .emacs:
(setq emulate-mac-finnish-keyboard-mode t)
But is there any way to use this feature in Emacs 24? Has anyone ever tried porting emulate-mac-keyboard-mode.el to standard Emacs?
And no, cmd as meta is not an option for me.
Has anyone ever tried porting emulate-mac-keyboard-mode.el to
standard Emacs?
I haven't tested it, but this answer to the question you linked claims to have done just that.
I am not using Emacs but when I tried to remap certain keys for VIM I had some wired trouble. I finally found out that these issues were caused by Terminal.app as it somehow did not pass through some key events. I then switched to iTerm2 which also had some additional features, e.g. X11 mouse events without need for plugins.
I use EmacsForMacosx. This claims to be pure gnu emacs.
The options you are asking for are easily available through customize-group ns
(from what I know the naming comes from NextStep which kinda was a precessor of OSX)
personally I set the fn key to meta as I hardly use it within emacs. And keep alt as used by mac. You can also set left and right alternate to different functions - like for german on windows keyboards.
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