• Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 days ago

    How does macOS discern between wanting to use diacritics and just trying to write the letter multiple times in a row?
    And how do you choose the version you would like to use (I assume by selecting the numbers printed below)?
    And yes, I have never used a Mac in my whole life up to now and am therefore completely clueless ;-)

    • MurrayL@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      In typical Apple fashion, ‘that’s the neat part - it doesn’t’. If you want to be able to hold a letter to type it repeatedly, you have to disable the diacritics popup with a console command.

      It’s the sort of stubborn ‘getting in my way’ feature that drives some people nuts when using a Mac, but in my experience it’s far more useful to be able to easily type accented characters than it is to be able to save half a second on the rare occasions I want to type ‘ooooooooooooooh’.

      And yeah, if the popup is open you either hit the number displayed under the character you want or use the mouse to click on it.

      • Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 days ago

        Thanks, actually sounds like a useful feature!

        Although as a SW dev I do regularly depend on the repeating character behaviour, but usually not for normal letters.
        But typing stuff like:
        /*********************************************************/
        is pretty common for me and would be annoying without auto-repeat of the respective character…

        • MurrayL@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          That would still work - asterisk isn’t a letter that can be accented, so the popup wouldn’t appear and the key would repeat as normal.

        • tal@lemmy.today
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          1 day ago

          But typing stuff like: /*********************************************************/ is pretty common for me and would be annoying without auto-repeat of the respective character…

          If you’re coding, your code editor may have some way to input that.

          Some people who frequently input something like that use a snippet system.

          In emacs, hitting most keys (like “*”) runs self-insert-command. That takes a numeric parameter, so one can just do something like / M-5 M-6 * / (slash, hold Alt, type 56, hit asterisk, slash) to get a slash followed by 56 asterisks followed by a slash.

          I’m not really a serious vim person, but I’m sure that vim has similar functionality.

          searches

          https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5054128/repeating-characters-in-vim-insert-mode

          Looks like, in insert mode, / Control-o 56 a * Esc a /. Probably not using correct vim terminology for the keystrokes, but you get my drift.

          • Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 day ago

            I have to reserve the limited keystroke remembering capacity of my aging brain to more crucial stuff, I am afraid…

            Also, the tiny time span passing while mindlessly holding down the “*” key is a welcome pause to clear your mind, take a short breath and gather your thoughts on what the heck you are supposed to be writing in the comment body following the /**********/ line. ;-)