Subject: bug#41403: A more user-friendly version of GNU Emacs

From: Mattias Engdegård <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2021 20:47:56 +0200

22 sep. 2021 kl. 20.01 skrev Andreas Schwab <[email-masked]>:

> That's exctly the problem.  What Apple calls the Option key, is the Alt
> key on ordinary keyboards.

But they never switched the keys that you claimed they did.
Apple have their own keyboard design tradition and while they later reconciled their layout with that from IBM, they didn't somehow take IBM's keyboard and make arbitrary changes for nefarious reasons.

There isn't necessarily a bijection between Mac and PC keys. Option mostly corresponds to today's AltGr (for input of more characters) but is also used to modify function keys and mouse clicks. Command was originally designed as a more principled variant of the conventional Control  key (ie, for function keystrokes), but better located and without the historical TTY control code baggage. Later on Control was added to Mac keyboards as well for use in terminal emulators and the like, and is today just another modifier.

From your point of view you may wish that company this-and-that would have made different decisions and so do I (most definitely), but history is what it is.