![finermac:
Pressing and holding a letter now shows a list of variations similar to the keyboard on iOS.
This is awesome. Lion has leap-frogged the one function I felt was more intuitive in Linux than the Mac.
The previous process for typing expanded character sets in Mac OSX involved a key combination that didn’t always make a lot of sense. Typing some characters were easy, but others didn’t make much sense. Although it was far more discoverable than Windows’s Alt+123 approach [1], Linux solved it much more cleanly by using the Compose key [2] to combine character glyphs in discoverable ways.
For example, to type é (e-acute) [3] would require the following key combinations in the different systems:
Mac: Option+E, then E. Kind of discoverable, I guess.
Linux: Compose+’, then E. Discoverable in that é looks like an e with an apostrophe over it.
Windows: Alt+0233. Love your work, Microsoft.
On the other hand, if I wanted to type ö (o-umlaut) [3], I would do the following:
Mac: Option+U, then O. Not as discoverable. I guess the reasoning is that ü is more common for umlaut-usage, so hide umlauts on the U key. Or maybe just because “umlaut” starts with u…
Linux: Compose+Shift+’, then O. Discoverable in that ö looks like an o with quotation marks over it (Shift+’ gives you “ ).
Windows: Alt+0246.
The Linux system also works well for things like ™ (Compose+T+M) and £ (Compose+-+L) where the Mac system used to be far less intuitive (Option+2 and Option+3).
But once iOS gave us the ability to hold down a letter for diacritic options, all other systems seemed archaic. So I’m certainly glad to see the feature make its way to OSX Lion.
[1] Microsoft Word implemented their own far more logical system that worked more like a mix of the Linux and Mac key combinations, but the rivalries within Microsoft seem to have ensured this great improvement hasn’t made it through to the Windows operating system as a whole.
[2] To be fair, you do have to explicitly set up the use of Compose key, at least in Gnome. So it doesn’t work great “out-of-the-box”.
[3] Personally, I find myself needing to type é and ö a lot to spell “Padmé” and “Björk” :)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lorlngMx0w1qzii3wo1_400.png)
Pressing and holding a letter now shows a list of variations similar to the keyboard on iOS.
This is awesome. Lion has leap-frogged the one function I felt was more intuitive in Linux than the Mac.
The previous process for typing expanded character sets in Mac OSX involved a key combination that didn’t always make a lot of sense. Typing some characters were easy, but others didn’t make much sense. Although it was far more discoverable than Windows’s Alt+123 approach [1], Linux solved it much more cleanly by using the Compose key [2] to combine character glyphs in discoverable ways.
For example, to type é (e-acute) [3] would require the following key combinations in the different systems:
- Mac: Option+E, then E. Kind of discoverable, I guess.
- Linux: Compose+’, then E. Discoverable in that é looks like an e with an apostrophe over it.
- Windows: Alt+0233. Love your work, Microsoft.
On the other hand, if I wanted to type ö (o-umlaut) [3], I would do the following:
- Mac: Option+U, then O. Not as discoverable. I guess the reasoning is that ü is more common for umlaut-usage, so hide umlauts on the U key. Or maybe just because “umlaut” starts with u…
- Linux: Compose+Shift+’, then O. Discoverable in that ö looks like an o with quotation marks over it (Shift+’ gives you “ ).
- Windows: Alt+0246.
The Linux system also works well for things like ™ (Compose+T+M) and £ (Compose+-+L) where the Mac system used to be far less intuitive (Option+2 and Option+3).
But once iOS gave us the ability to hold down a letter for diacritic options, all other systems seemed archaic. So I’m certainly glad to see the feature make its way to OSX Lion.
- [1] Microsoft Word implemented their own far more logical system that worked more like a mix of the Linux and Mac key combinations, but the rivalries within Microsoft seem to have ensured this great improvement hasn’t made it through to the Windows operating system as a whole.
- [2] To be fair, you do have to explicitly set up the use of Compose key, at least in Gnome. So it doesn’t work great “out-of-the-box”.
- [3] Personally, I find myself needing to type é and ö a lot to spell “Padmé” and “Björk” :)
