Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / August 2004

Ah, I bet you are a bit newer to Mac than I guessed.
One of the better kept secrets is how to ket to the keyboard viewer

System Preferences -> International

I kid you not. There is a warped kind of logic if you squint a bit. ;-)

Anyway click on the right magic in there, and the keyboard view appears
on the language menu (that union flag jobbie) on the main menu bar.

Whenever you can't remember how to make a ¤ Euro or a # hash or a ¶
pilcrow etc., wake the keyboard menu and start pressing shift and
option and  the two together to see what magic characters appear under
the keycaps in its window.

If you really want to get carried away, advance to the character
palette (yep System Preferences -> International -- I thought you would
never ask). However, you will need to use the wierder ones of those in
a unicode-aware program. TextEdit is a good one to play with.

The Apple (cloverleaf) key is what you would think of as the ALT key.  
It is the Apple Command key, and when you pull down a menu and it shows
a short cut to the right with the Cloverleaf-symbol/some-letter, then
hold the Apple command key (like a shift key) and then press the letter
and you will have performed the shortcut.  

In the menu, when you see a horizontal fork (like a railroad track switch

      ----
        \_

This says hold the "Option" key

If you see a caret key in the menu shortcut, then this means hold the
"Control" key.

if you see an up arrow in the menu shortcut, then this means hold the
"Shift" key.

The "Control" key is the same as control on a PC keyboard, at least in
regards to using a telnet terminal session :-)  What magic happens when
you use control as part of a shortcut will of course be strictly Mac
specific.  The biggest is cut, copy, paste which are all based on the
Apple Command key, and not the control key :-)
The Option key is generally a modifier key for shortcuts, and for typing
additional letters and symbols on your keyboard (like copyright symbol;
option g, sigma; option w, etc...)

The fn key if you have a laptop, gives you symbol in the lower right
corner of a key.  If you do not have a laptop, then you have an extended
keyboard, and do not need to simulate the extended keyboard.

Until recently the F1, F2, ... function keys were mostly unused, but now
there are things like Expose that do magical things with F9, F10, and
F11.  One of the function keys (generally the one furtherest to the
right is CD Eject; F12 on a laptop, F15 on a full keyboard).  I also use
XKeys to make additional function key mappings/shortcuts
(versiontracker.com).

If you have a laptop, then look for uControl to remap some of the keys
(versiontracker.com).  Also look at SideTrack for doing strange things
to your touchpad area.

And there is also the Finder Help menu that can be useful.  Try
searching for "shortcuts" or "keyboard" or "keyboard keys" or
"cloverleaf key" or "control key" or "option key", etc...

Good luck.  Welcome to the world of Mac, and we hope you enjoy your stay.

                                       Bob Harris