I'm having difficulty parsing your rant. I can't tell if we agree or not. :)
Ctrl+C is a method of generating a standard ASCII character which has meant "ETX" (end of text, sometimes "interrupt") for many decades.
Other control chars are useful too. In addition to C, I use S, Q, D, Z, V, O, N, I, G, H, M, L, J, Y, A, E, K, W ... probably others ... fairly regularly.
So in the early 1980s, along comes MacOS which needs keyboard shortcuts for GUI actions. What does Apple do? They add a key to the keyboard, an Alt or Meta equivalent called "Command". OK, awesome.
Then Windows comes along. Microsoft says "eh, who cares let's break it all", (or more charitably "we don't control the hardware and can't add a key, so let's break it all") and reuses Ctrl+C for copy. Et cetera.
Then Linux desktop environments come along and say "well people really like Windows...we don't, but most people who might try our DE probably do, so let's borrow the bad ideas from Windows instead of the good ideas from Unix or MacOS. Let's use Ctrl+C for copy! But also the command line is kind of important on Linux, so let's screw everything up and use Ctrl+Shift+C for copy in the terminal only because who cares about usability and UX consistency? Not us!"
That was 25 years ago. Nothing has improved since then. Alas.
> They add a key to the keyboard, an Alt or Meta equivalent called "Command". OK, awesome.
Apple added three keys on the original Mac keyboard. The Command key, the Option key (which is used, more or less, as a second Shift key) and the Enter key (not to be confused with Return). The Enter key eventually was deprecated and made equivalent to keypad-Enter. It's now mapped to Shift-Return on Macs. The Option key, not the Command key, is now mapped on modern keyboards to Alt. The Command key is its own wonderful beast. Both ESC and Control were missing; both were added back later.
This is true, and it's an evolution from the Apple II (//, ][, etc) days which had two Apple keys (Open Apple and Closed Apple), one on each side of the space bar.
I recall reading somewhere that Jobs hated Open Apple and Closed Apple. But thank goodness for ⌘ !
Actually, the Mac's keys are derived from the Lisa, whose release well predates the Apple IIe (the first II with the apple keys). Except for the numeric keypad, the Lisa keyboard differed from the Mac only in that the Lisa used an Apple symbol whereas the Mac used ⌘.
I remembered that the Mac Plus (1986) had ⌘, and that the //e and //c both had Open/Closed Apple keys, but wasn't sure about the transition through Lisa and the original Mac.
Wikipedia has both the //e and the Lisa with a release date of January 1983. But of course the Lisa project goes way back!
I should have been more clear, indeed, I find sending signals to the system using the `ctrl` good and proper. I have no problem with the control key, sequences, or characters. My issue is ignoring the sheer, maddening, brilliance of the command key...
> Then Linux desktop environments come along and say "well people really like Windows...we don't, but most people who might try our DE probably do, so let's borrow the bad ideas from Windows instead of the good ideas from Unix or MacOS. Let's use Ctrl+C for copy! But also the command line is kind of important on Linux, so let's screw everything up and use Ctrl+Shift+C for copy in the terminal only because who cares about usability and UX consistency? Not us!"
Yes :jacknicholsonnoddingandsmiling:
Linux and non-mac *nix systems emphasize how powerful the command line is but totally fucking ignore even the most fundamental of modern use case(s): copying and fucking pasting. It's just fucking silly. Yew (being a fancy terminal box thing) ain't that powerful if yew cain't (yeah, that's can't + ain't) copy and paste some shit. It's like someone bragging about how fast they can type with their feet, "...cool brometheus... how about you get a fucking job and pay rent for once?"
> "we don't control the hardware and can't add a key, so let's break it all"
But they do control it enough to add the Windows logo key and the context menu key.
I use the Windows logo "Super" key a lot (mostly for workspaces) and I miss the context menu key which is there on my office keyboard but lacks on my laptop (which even has a keypad). Being able to open a context menu without using a mouse is a very useful convenience.
>Microsoft says "eh, who cares let's break it all", and reuses Ctrl+C for copy.
It wasn't Microsoft though. Common GUI hotkeys like Ctrl+Z/X/C/V/P were introduced in Xerox Alto first, and everybody else used this as a convention, including Microsoft.
I'm not sure what hotkeys Alto Executive used, and whether there was a mnemonic conflict at all.
Ctrl+C is a method of generating a standard ASCII character which has meant "ETX" (end of text, sometimes "interrupt") for many decades.
Other control chars are useful too. In addition to C, I use S, Q, D, Z, V, O, N, I, G, H, M, L, J, Y, A, E, K, W ... probably others ... fairly regularly.
So in the early 1980s, along comes MacOS which needs keyboard shortcuts for GUI actions. What does Apple do? They add a key to the keyboard, an Alt or Meta equivalent called "Command". OK, awesome.
Then Windows comes along. Microsoft says "eh, who cares let's break it all", (or more charitably "we don't control the hardware and can't add a key, so let's break it all") and reuses Ctrl+C for copy. Et cetera.
Then Linux desktop environments come along and say "well people really like Windows...we don't, but most people who might try our DE probably do, so let's borrow the bad ideas from Windows instead of the good ideas from Unix or MacOS. Let's use Ctrl+C for copy! But also the command line is kind of important on Linux, so let's screw everything up and use Ctrl+Shift+C for copy in the terminal only because who cares about usability and UX consistency? Not us!"
That was 25 years ago. Nothing has improved since then. Alas.