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    • #3428

      freddo
      Participant

      I’m trying to get a new Mac into a usable state. (HighSierra 10.13.6 if it matters)

      Anyone know: Is there a way of getting linux-style, middle-click copy-and-paste on a trackpad or mouse (without having to do the long-winded ctrl-c, ctrl-v or the same with drop-down menus)? This is so often used when editing it *really* slows things down not having it.

      Other grips that I’ve coped with are:

      * Scroll-bars are not enabled by default!?? One has to set scroll-bars to be “always on”. I can understand not having scroll bars on a touch-screen device, but on a large-screen keyboard device they are surely essential and should be a default?

      * The trackpad won’t “double-click and drag” windows!! Or rather, this option is deeply hidden in the “Accessibility” settings. Doesn’t everyone use double-click and drag? Why isn’t it a default?

      * The mouse is *ludicrously* slow, even if put on its fastest menu setting. Fortunately, you can overwrite this with: “defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling -float 9.0”. The default value is 1! The fastest is only at 3, whereas 9 seems good to me. Why can’t they have the slider going up to 9? Do people really use ludicrously slow values?

      Anyhow, I’m slowly getting the hang of it, it would be nice if there were a simple “behave sensibly like Linux” menu option!

    • #3429

      goon
      Participant

      Well, the bottom 3 items just come down to ‘it doesn’t work how I’m used to’, which is unfortunately just something you have to accept if you want to switch platform.

      Mac OS is a great OS, and for day to day use it’s much ‘better’ than Linux (and I say that from the perspective of a professional Linux sysadmin and engineer), but Linux does offer way, way more transparency and customisability and there will be times when achieving something doable in Linux in MacOS turns out to be way harder or basically impossible as a result.

      Regarding your main question, you might want to take a look at BetterTouchTool (https://folivora.ai). It adds a huge amount of customisability to trackpad/keyboard/mouse behavior and might be able to get you close to what you’re looking for. Other than that, there are specific apps that provide that behavior (eg, iTerm2 instead of the built-in Terminal app) so that might be an option.

      • #3431

        Heyman
        Participant

        You’re right, all upgrades and all other platforms should of course work exactly as I’m used to!

        But things like omitting the ctrl-c/ctrl-v to copy/paste with one middle click is so useful that I’m amazed if mac users generally don’t want it. (Or maybe they just don’t know that it’s possible?)

      • #3432

        clifford
        Participant

        Genuine question, how is a mouse being slow simply a case of being something you’re not used to.

        I can maybe see the case for the others. Some way of scrolling without a scroll bar etc.

        • #3433

          goon
          Participant

          Well, given the number of people who use macs who find the default usable, the available settings pretty much have to be fast ‘enough’ by definition, don’t they?

          Given that it’s a mouse and not the built in track pad it’s possible that there’s something about the particular mouse that Coel uses which means he needs an exceptionally high setting? Or maybe he just has a really extreme preference. I use a non-Apple USB mouse and I don’t believe I’ve ever done anything special to the mouse acceleration.

          At least that one has an easy fix. I’m not sure there is going to be a 100% equivalent for the Linux-like copy and paste behaviour.

          • #3434

            neb
            Participant

            I’m someone who’s always used a Mac, but like to have the mouse very fast. The adjustments on the Mac (I think they’ve recently slowed down the default speed) are not enough for my liking. There is actually a simple way of doing it by changing some code via Terminal (com.apple.mouse.scaling) … do a bing search to find out how; but even simpler is to use some third-party software, as I mentioned higher in the thread. It really isn’t a problem.

            • This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by neb.
            • This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by neb.
          • #3438

            freddo
            Participant

            Or maybe he just has a really extreme preference.

            Maybe! It’s a relic from my mis-spent youth playing mouse-based computer games, where to get maximum agility you need a lot of response for a minimal hand movement.

            But even on my “extreme” setting, to move the cursor from one corner of the 21″ screen to the other I still need to move the mouse 6 cm.

            That means that on the highest setting in “preferences” (HighSierra with Apple Magic Mouse) one would need to move the mouse 18 cm!

            For anyone interested, the commands are:
            “defaults read -g com.apple.mouse.scaling”
            to see what value you’re currently using, and:
            “defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling -float 9.0”
            to set the value, where the last number is the value.

    • #3430

      Heyman
      Participant

      I’ve found this works well for speeding up mouse tracking on the Mac:

      https://benh57.com/mousezoom.html

    • #3437

      Anonymous
      Participant

      For my macs (which run linux) I remap the useless apple keys to be left, middle and right clicks. You can (probably) remap the mac keys in macos to do similar but if you want X/unix like behaviour on your mac just install linux – nowdays it’s trivial (unlike the powerpc days when mac hardware was somewhat more proprietary) and you don’t have to suffer the irritating limitations of macos.

    • #3439

      damon
      Participant

      Apple Magic Mouse here – not the highest setting one corner of a 1920 x 1080 screen about 3cm of mouse movement – no fiddling. Scaling 2.5!

      I wonder about your mouse!

    • #3440

      sammo
      Participant

      On my MagicZoom (which comes up in Preferences) you get a simple sliding scale. I’ve got mine set only about 2/3 way … it calls it ‘Wild Fast 6.06 (Apple Max: 1.7)’. This means I can move the cursor diagonally right across my 22″ monitor with about a 5 cm mouse movement.

    • #3441

      Jethro
      Participant

      Curious as to the difference – I made an Ubuntu bootable drive – I see what you mean. Linux is wildly different (and to my mind not friendly at all!).

      Mac->System Preferences->Trackpad or Mouse ->Point and Click -> Tracking speed

      should enable you to do what you want

      I have mine set so that in addition a left click gives me a contextual menu that has select something (point and double click or triple click for whole paragraph) copy and paste as options.

      Also – the scrollbar thing is annoying and was the source of huge debate when Apple decided to make various UI things “invisible” to avoid confusing it’s users (i,e reduce the number of calls to support!). Mostly, two fingers on a trackpad will enable scrolling. There’s a lot of muscle memory involved with using a new machine. I find using my wife’s laptop infuriating as she has it set up completely differently.

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