Mac OS X Keyboard Tips

Special Sybmols/Characters

Hash or Pound Sign (#)

option-3 produces a British Pound sign on a US keyboard and the hash or pound symbol on a UK keyboard.

Input Menu

There is an Input Menu that can be turned on in System Preferences->International.

Select the Input Menu tab and turn on the Character Palette and Keyboard Viewer. Enable the "Show input menu in menu bar" checkbox.

Click the flag that is now displayed in the menu bar and select "Show Keybaord Viewer". Now when you hold down the shift or option keys, you can see which keys are mapped to which characters.

Choosing to view "Roman" characters, "by Category" and selecting the "Accented Latin" characters will display the common european accented characters.

GUI

Emulate Three Button Mouse

In the Apple X11 application's preferences, make sure that the "Emulate three button mouse" option is selected.

  • Middle mouse button - Option key

  • Right mouse button - Command key

Copying and Pasting Between X11 and Mac OS X

Generally, between X11 applications, select text using mouse to copy and use middle-click to paste.

To copy from X11 application to a Mac OS X application, after selecting text with the mouse, press Command-c to copy into the Mac OS X buffer.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Safari

Search Help for "safari keyboard shortcuts" for a list.

ActionShortcut
Next WindowCommand-back-tick
Previous WindowCommand-~

Resources

-- Frank Dean - 30 Jan 2010