[sbf501]

Unless you have tiny monkeypaws for hands, ⌘-V is a painful gesture and doesn't make sense on any human hand. This is one of apple's major human interface messups. And I'll die on that hill.

Ctrl on the far left of the keyboard (where FN is on apple keyboards) is far more ergonomically laid out, doesn't require a radical twist of the fingers, and also allows your fingers to remain in home-row with thumb on space.

Personally I think ALL modifier keys should be on the far left/right of a keyboard where they can all be accessed by a pinky finger. It is faster, doesn't require bone crossing, and allows you to remain in a typing position. Combinations of multiple modifiers should be very rare, if it isn't someone needs to go back to UI/UX school. (I blame Emacs for that!)

[whoooooo123]

> Unless you have tiny monkeypaws for hands, ⌘-V is a painful gesture and doesn't make sense on any human hand.

I don't find this true at all, and as far as I can tell I have normal-sized hands.

How do you rest your fingers on the keyboard? When I have my eight fingers on the home keys, I can hit ⌘-C by bending my index finger in isolation. To hit ⌘-V, I have to rotate my entire left hand very slightly to the right while also bending my index finger. However, I've never once thought consciously about how to perform this action before today, despite having hit ⌘-V millions of times - so it's never struck me as a difficult or uncomfortable maneuver.

[sbf501]

> How do you rest your fingers on the keyboard?

Standard home-row position. Having to scoot my thumb over to square-loop is very uncomfortable because it naturally rests on the spacebar.

It might be that I've been programming for close to 40 years and have grown accustomed to CTRL being an involuntary gesture for the pinky. Just like escape (from using vi for 30+ years).

It could be that people born using loop-* are used to it, plus Apple pushing ctrl into a weird place on its keyboards just means that your never had the opportunity to experience the ergonomically superior CTRL-C/V from the "old days" of keyboards before modifier madness took over. TBH emacs CTRL-ALT bothered me as well, and I had similar debates on Usenet. :) Or you are young and flexible. :)

[rcoveson]

I'm confused by this subthread. Are people hitting the Spacebar-adjacent modifier key with their index finger? It's meant to be hit with the thumb, and it's far more ergonomic than the pinky holding the bottom-left modifier key. ⌘-A should be nothing but an easy thumb contraction.

I use the usual Caps Lock position as my "Control" key, which is faster and more ergonomic than any of the traditional modifier positions, but the second place is easily the Spacebar-adjacent modifier key (I use it as my Super key, for window manager controls like workspace switching and application launcher). I have Alt bound to the bottom-left position where Control usually is. Alt doesn't get used nearly as much, and that's the third-best spot. The spot in between the two bottom-row modifiers is the least accessible by far (hard to hit accurately with the pinky, out of reach of the thumb). 101-key keyboards don't have it at all. I've recently started using it as push-to-talk, which works fine since it's not used for anything else and you don't have to chord it with anything.

[twobitshifter]

Agreed, if trying to do it with one hand. If you chord with the alternate hand’s thumb all is well. However, I would expect most people tend use only one half of the shift ctrl alt cmd/win keys. Typically with the left hand from what I’ve seen.