Apologies if this is dumb question, but I am just moving over to using Scrivener on the Mac (been using the Linux version) and I am having “keyboard mapping issues”. One of the biggies is a keyboard shortcut to “select next word”.
On Linux (and most normal editors like this blog one), control-shift-leftarrow selects the next word, hit leftarrow again and it extends the selection so two words are selected. And so on. (The rightarrow selects the previous word).
On the Mac, it selects to the end-of-line, regardless of the word count. This seems to be broken behavior, then it could be Mac-standard. I have no idea.
So, (1) how do I get the Mac version to “select next word”? And, (2) how do I remap control-shift-arrow to “select word”? I really don’t want to have to take my hands from the keyboard and start mousing. I know I can do that, but it is so inefficient.
Yes, this is all Mac standard, the way it has worked for decades. Keyboard text editing is documented in §15.2, Editing Basics. On a Mac, the Option key is the closest modifier to what you are used to with the Ctrl key on Windows (or I guess the desktop environment you used in Linux, most of them copy Windows these days).
Adding Shift to movement shortcuts is the same. Option will move by word or paragraph, depending on the arrow direction, so Shift-Option will select by these increments. Command is more analogous to Home/End. So Command-Up is like Ctrl-Home, Command-Right = End.
Also, if you’re using a laptop or a small external keyboard (as opposed to the full keyboard with a numpad), then you’ll want to become familiar with the Fn key. Fn-delete, for example, is what you will be more familiar with as the “Del” key in Win/Linux. Thus, Fn-Opt-delete will delete the next word after your caret, Opt-delete the previous word. Fn also interacts with the arrow keys to provide Home/End/PgUp/PgDown keys with the Left/Right/Up/Down keys, respectively (though do not expect them to work as you are accustomed to).
And, since you are coming from Linux, you may be comfortable with simple Emacs caret navigation. Mac text fields all support basic (non-chorded) controls. Ctrl-n will go down a line, etc.
Thank you for your help and pointing me in the right direction.