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Mac OS X: often used UNIX keys on the German keyboard

Saturday Jan 10, 2009

Enough is enough. Enough testing of <ctrl><alt><cmd> with any possible key to find out where the [, ], |, \, {, } or even ~ keys are on my German keyboard. Or using <alt><cmd>t to display the character map in the Terminal aplication to get those keys.

So here it is, my personal keyboard map reminder for the Mac OS X:

\|	pipe symbol	<alt>7
\	backslash	<alt><shift>7 = <alt>/
[	left (opening) square bracket	<alt>5
]	right (closing) square bracket	<alt>6
{	left (opening) curly bracket	<alt>8
}	right (closing) curly bracket	<alt>9
~	Tilde	<alt>n followed by the space key
@	"At" symbol	<alt>l (owercase L)

My favorite is the @ symbol! This is because if you have just worked on a PC (where the @ symbol is created by pressing the <AltGr> - which is just right of the space bar - and then the letter q), and now on a Mac also press the key right of the space bar (it's the cmd key) with the letter q, you will end your current program - sometimes without a confirmation. That's the hard way of learning how to enter the @ symbol on a Mac.

The good news is: If you run OpenSolaris inside VirtualBox, you can press the same key combinations (use <right alt> on the mac instead of the <AltGr>) as you are used to on a PC to get the UNIX special keys, with the exception of the pipe (|), less than (<), and greater than (>) symbols. These ones can be reached by pressing using the ^ key instead of the < key.

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