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zzzmarcus

My favorites are the emacs-style shortcuts that work in all native textfields is OSX:

ctrl+f - move one character forward

ctrl+v - move one character backwards

ctrl+n - next line

ctrl+p - previous line

ctrl+k - delete to the end of the line

ctrl+d - delete the next character

ctrl+h - delete the previous character (backspace)

ctrl+o - insert a newline below the current

Using the ctrl key takes some getting used to if you've used a Mac for a long time (I mapped mine to caps lock in the system preferences) but once you learn these keys they are incredibly useful.

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^T - change letters: colo| -> cool|

^L - center selected line (edit: center current line in window)

^E - move cursor to line end

^A - move cursor to the beginning of the line

^Y - yank (paste previously deleted text with ^K)

Corrections:

^B - move one character backwards

(^V is page down)

Could you explain ^L more clearly? I tried it and nothing happened.

Sure, try moving cursor to some line in TextEdit (with a document that is large enough to have scroll bars), then press ^L — the line with cursor becomes centered.

Ah, the scrollbar gets centered vertically on the current line. Got it.

As an emacs user, two problems with these key combos that are constantly burning me:

When I hit ^A in a text field of my webmail app (Fastmail) it reloads the page I'm typing in, losing all the text I've entered so far. You have no idea how hard it is for an emacs user to stop doing this. So be very careful on web pages.

I keep using kill-and-yank subconsciously because I'm trained in it. But the kill ring (is it even a ring?) gets preserved... idiosyncratically in Mac OS X, particularly when you move from app to app, and of course it is completely separate from the clipboard where copies and pastes go. I quite commonly kill something and then can't get it to yank, or kill something and then try to paste it and fail.

Actually, I find C-w more annoying in web browsers. In emacs, I have it bound to backward-kill-word, and use it almost as much as backspace.

In firefox, the results are not too good. The tab dies, taking the entire textbox with it. Annoying.

The moral of the story is to not use software other than emacs. I use Gnus for mail and w3m for light web browsing, eliminating any problem with keybinding emulation. It is emacs, so it acts like emacs.

For heavier web browsing, I use conkeror. It is almost like emacs, but not quite. Better than anything else, though.

You might consider using Conkeror (http://conkeror.org/), which provides very, very full Emacs support, while using Firefox for the rendering engine.

This is indeed what I use :)

I still have bad memories floating around in my head from when I used Firefox, though.

I find it amusing that OS X has the best GNU-style keybinding support of any of the major OSes. I tried using emacs-style keybindings in Gtk+, but it just doesn't work as well as Apple's implementation.

That's OK, though, because I don't leave emacs very often ;)

Full list here: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/system-bindings.html

Also see: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html

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