Home and End Keys

Eggplant Functional
1

hello All,

I’ve got another tiny suggestion for a future release…

I would like it if Eggplant’s script editor used the Home and End keys more like that of Word or TextEdit. Hitting End brings you to the end of a line, not the end of the file, and Home brings you to the beginning of a line. I often move around in a line of text with the Home and End keys, and also use them to extend a selection. I think it would be nifty if Eggplant would do these things.

Thanks for listening,

Allen

2

I’m not sure what application the developers are taking their leads from as far these sorts of navigation go – it might just be default behavior of the Apple classes. You can use Command + LeftArrow to get the beginning of the line, Command + RightArrow to get to the end, Command + DownArrow to get to the end of the document and Command + UpArrow to get to the beginning; adding Shift to these does the selection.

3

Only thing I’m missing is Option + DownArrow to go to the end of the visible part of the text and Option + UpArrow to the beginning and if already there, scroll up/down one page. Like in BBEdit or CodeWarrior.

4

Also, ctrl-a will take you to the start of a line and ctrl-e will take you to the end. These are the same shortcuts that are used in Terminal windows.

I find them easier to hit than the option-left and option-right combos, personally.

Chris.

5

Here’s a list of shortcuts I put together a while back and forgot that I had:

End of document = Command + Down arrow (+ Shift to select for all)
Beginning of document = Command + Up arrow
End of current line = Command + Right arrow, Control + Right arrow, or Option + Down arrow
Beginning of current line = Command + Left arrow, Control + Left arrow, or Option + Up arrow
Forward one word = Option + Right arrow
Backward one word = Option + Left arrow
Page down [up] (move cursor) = Control + Page down [up]

Delete backwards one word = Option + Delete

Note that Shift + Home and Shift + Page Up, and Shift + End and Shift + Page Down will select backwards and forwards respectively from the current insertion point. Also holding down either the Control key or the Option key in conjunction with Page Up and Page Down will move the cursor by pages. Control + Up arrow and Control + Down arrow mimics the Page up and Page down functionality, changing the area displayed without moving the cursor.

There are also numerous useful keyboard shortcuts that Mac OS X has inherited from its Unix underpinnings, and these also work in Eggplant, for example:

Control + a = beginning of line
Control + e = end of line
Control + b = back one character
Control + f = forward one character
Control + d = delete forward
Control + h = delete backward
Control + k = delete to end of line
Control + n = down one line
Control + p = up one line
Control + o = insert a return after the insertion point
Control + t = transpose (switch) the characters on either side of the insertion point

I’ve probably missed a few. Let me know and we can build a comprehensive list.

6

Thanks for the list! I use Windows most of the time and I’m completely frustrated with the way the Home/End PageUp/Down keys work in Eggplant.

7

Ok, just to be clear – this isn’t just Eggplant. These are the “Default Key Bindings” within all Mac OS X apps. So the same as in Mail, Safari, TextEdit, iTunes, Pages, etc.

They are based on the Emacs keybindings, but not surprisingly people coming from Windows may be used to slightly different configurations.

The good news is that they can be modified globally to suit your personal tastes —

A very good article on how to do this is available here
http://www.lsmason.com/articles/macosxkeybindings.html

But to save you some trouble here is a file to save in your ~/Library/KeyBindings/ folder (which you might need to create) that should be closer to what you are used to. Feel free to contribute bindings back to this list and we’ll try to maintain this “Welcome Windows Users binding file”.

8

Thanks! I’d downloaded something called DoubleCommand, but I was never able to get it to work as advertised.

9

I changed cut, copy, paste, and undo to their windows equivalents: ^x, ^c, ^v, & ^z, respectively. Since I’m using a Windows keyboard, this works better for me.

On a similar note, is there any way to Windify the menus on the Mac? By that I mean the menus show these weird icons for the Option, Command, and who-knows-what-else key, but since I’m using a Windows keyboard, I’d rather see Ctrl, Alt, etc.