Two quick OSX newbie questions...

Recent switcher to OSX after 16 years on a Solaris/CDE desktop. As you can imagine, things are a bit different

Two quick initial questions:

- How do I detect and remap keys ? I am using a non-mac keyboard which does not, of course, have the "eject" button. So I want to measure what OSX thinks the "context menu" button is, and then remap that key to "eject".

So this is sort of two questions, namely:

a) what is the OSX equivalent of 'xev' (so I can press a button and receive confimation "I think you just pressed this button")

b) what is the OSX equivalent of 'xmodmap' (so I can remap whatever OSX thinks the "context menu" key is to "eject")


Second question is, how do I get command-tilde switching to return-to-last instead of always going forward ?

If you have, say, 10 Safari windows open, and you press command-tilde, you go to the next window. So far so good. But if you let go completely, and then press command-tilde again, instead of going BACK to the previous safari window, it actually continues going forward in the stack.

This is the opposite of how OSX treats command-tab, and I'd like their behavior to match. At first I thought this was a "mac-ism" but since I see command-tab works the way I expect it too, I think it is just a bug or an oddity.

So, how do I get command-tilde to behave the same way as command-tab ?

Many thanks.

 

Yes, I know that - but that's not quite what I am asking.

In BOTH command-tab and command-tilde, you can alter it with shift to make it go the opposite direction. Sure.

But the difference is, in command-tab, you go to the most recently used app. So if I am in photoshop, and I command-tab over five spots to get to Safari, and then use Safari a bit, when I command-tab again, I go RIGHT BACK to photoshop.

That is, I don't have to cycle forward through everything to get back to photoshop.

BUT, in command-tilde, I can never "go right back" to the last window - whether I go forward or backward, I have to go sequentially. This means I either have to always hit shift to go back and forth, or I have to cycle all the way through.

Hitting command-tilde once will NOT give you back the last window.

Is there a way to "fix" this ? Since it is the opposite behavior of alt-tab, one of them must be "wrong"

 

Same problem.

If I am working in tab #2 and tab #8 and need to quickly move between them, I can't. Regardless of whether I go backwards or forwards to get there, I still can't flip back and forth between 2 and 8.

Or, in more general terms, I can't go to "the previous item".

(never mind the fact that this is a two handed keystroke

I wouldn't be looking so hard for the answer here if command-tab didn't already behave this way. It's not like what I am looking for is "not the mac way" since it clearly _is_ "the mac way", since command-tab DOES allow you to move to "the previous item".

So ... no ideas ? Everyone just moves their mouse around all day and this isn't an issue for anyone else ?

 

Nope.

You missed the part, above, where I show that OSX _already does_ what I am looking for in its command-tab switching.

I am just looking for consistency between command-tab and command-tilde switching.

One works one way, the other works another way, and this is confusing since they are closely related functions. This has nothing to do with any other OS.

Maybe the correct thing to do is file a bug report and Apple can decide which behavior is broken, since they behave differently. I hope they decide that the command-tilde behavior is broken, since the current command-tab behavior is more flexible.

 

Never mind - OSX just uses F12 for eject on a non-mac keyboard, so there is no need to either identify keys with an xev-style app, or remap them.

Your point _is_ well taken though - I was browsing through the desktop pictures thread and not one person had the Terminal app in their dock ... that should have clued me in about the technical level

 

Sorry for hijacking my own thread. Cheers to you if you don't need to use commands like traceroute and nmap and lsof, etc. - you're probably happier than me without them.

So, back to the behavior...

What say ye ? Is command-tab broken or is command-tilde broken ?

Since there can only be one "mac way" and these very closely related functions behave differently, which one is "wrong" ?