> I realize that your email was a rant, meant to express frustration and not > necessarily logic or facts,
Haha. ...But there were a *few* facts lurking in my rant, plus a smidgeon of logic. So go on, fault me on one or the other. > the CTRL key predated both Windows and Mac OSes by quite some time. Oh yes... it predates computers. I remember it on the old tty. It had one use and one use only: to enter a "control" char: NUL, SOH, STX, ETX,... which it did by grounding a line or two, if memory serves. The original Mac "toaster" did not have a Control key. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Macintosh_Plus_Keyboard.jpg (...that's the Option key you see next to the Command key.) That was deliberate: to enforce the Mac gui paradigm. A lost cause, if ever there was one. (@Apple: do you want to sell your machines, or don't you?) Excellent histories of the Command and Control keys on modern computers can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_Key http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_key But the keyboard on my Macintosh II (which I bought to replace my Mac 512k, which quite literally toasted itself -- the power-unit was absurdly underpowered) certainly did have a Control key. By then the Mac had a good repertoire of apps, and M$ was in open conflict with Apple over "look 'n' feel". Since then the usage of Command and Control keys, along with all modifiers, has become capricious. (...Oh I know developers won't say that: they'll say their usage follows Iron Rules of Pure Logic -- to hell with whatever anyone else does.) But this caprice has not been to the benefit of novice users. ...If there still are any. ...Who matter. > As Chris B. already replied, any of us, individually or collectively, can > customize JHS as we like... (I'll assume you meant JGTK...) Oh yes. J602 and J701 are beatifully soft apps. The code which governs the JGTK menus is in '~addons/ide/gtk/gtk.ijs' -which you can readily find by Spotlighting the text of a menu item, such as: Run Project That done, a four-year old could hack it, to come up with what I offer as my suggestion: http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Interfaces/GTK/AdvanceLabMac ...but all this is a long way from the pure land of novice support. That said, why *should* JGTK make any concession to the novice? As Chris implies, its primary audience is developers wishing to employ GTK in their product. Not novices. Ergo the availability of labs on JGTK is just a bonus. I said "I don't know if anyone's listening". But I could have said it kinder. Or it could have been thrown right back at me... Why *should* anyone be listening? JGTK is an interface on the Mac for GTK afficionados. That's its central audience. It need have no special appeal to Mr Average Mac User coming new to J. (As indeed it doesn't.) On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 7:43 AM, Alan K. Stebbens <[email protected]> wrote: >> < Rant> ... >> Ctrl in Windows is (usually) the counterpart of Cmnd (⌘) on the Mac. >> But nowadays Mac keyboards offer a Ctrl key also, as a concession to >> ex-Windows customers (...growing) -- particularly users of M$Word, > > Ian, > > I realize that your email was a rant, meant to express frustration and not > necessarily logic or facts, but I also feel the need to set the record > straight: in that the CTRL key predated both Windows and Mac OSes by quite > some time. > > For example, running WordPerfect on a CP/M system required a fairly strong > left "pinky" because most of the editing was done with the CTRL key being > pressed semi-contantly. > > Furthermore, even while MS-DOS was the primary OS for large, clunky desktops, > the CTRL key was very much in use on BSD 4.2 Unix at the very least for line > editing (e.g., CTRL-C, CTRL-U, CTRL-\, CTRL-Z), and was widely available at > most colleges and universities. > > IMHO, the Mac OS X support of the CTRL key is (was) not a concession to > Windows, but rather a simple recognition the Terminal app users on Mac OS X > (which is really a Unix system), as well as the users of the larger non-Mac > OS world, which increasingly included other Unix variants as well as Windows > systems absolutely require the CTRL key, at the very least for command line > editing. > >> which has been re-ported to the Mac with little or no understanding of >> novice needs. There's no good reason for a novice ever to buy M$Word: >> the kludge is aimed at an existing audience. > > I'm no MS fanboy, but you should know that 2011 MSWord is actually a decent > Mac app port. The 2004 MSWord was .. okay ..; the 2008 MSWord was terrible. > >> But on the Mac: Ctrl+J to advance a Lab is Ctrl+J in JGTK not ⌘J ...it >> appears to be the sole exception to the "rule" Ctrl+ --> ⌘ . > > As Chris B. already replied, any of us, individually or collectively, can > customize JHS as we like. However, I do believe that there is a benefit to > having the "out of box" experience be as intuitive as possible. > > As Joey said in a later email, CTRL-J to advance a Lab seems perfectly fine > to me, and somewhat mnemonic. > >> I'd have pointed this out before but I don't know if anyone's >> listening. (How many Mac users are there on this list? Four?) >> </ Rant > > > Count++ me as a Mac user too. Since serial number 300 of the original Mac > line. But, I was also chained to a Windows XP laptop for 6 years, as part of > long visit with Dante in the Inferno. > > -- > Alan > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
