I’m seriously kind of bugged by the positions of the curly quotes symbols on the Mac keyboard. Their positions are:
- “ (left double): opt + [
- ” (right double): opt + shift + [
- ‘ (left single): opt + ]
- ’ (right single): opt + shift + ]
But for regular, non-curly quotes, " (double quote) is produced by shift + ’ (apostrophe), right? So this system DOES MY HEAD IN! What I constantly, intuitively expect is instead:
- ‘ (left single): opt + [
- ’ (right single): opt + ]
- “ (left double): opt + shift + [
- ” (right double): opt + shift + ]
That is, having left-quotes on the left-side key and right-quotes on the right side key, and needing shift to activate double quotes for consistency with the non-curly version. This is how I want my keyboard to work.
Now, I installed Karabiner a few months ago back when I was experimenting with keyboard layouts (before I switched to standard left-hand Dvorak). The thing is that because these are key combinations they don’t seem as easy to change as basic “rearrange the keys”, and the Karabiner complex modifications repository doesn’t seem to have anything where someone has done this already that I can just import. (That’s unless they’ve given it some non-obvious name to the point that I can’t find it.) So, if I really want my keyboard to work like this (and I assure you, it’d be a lot better for my sanity) it looks like my best option is to work out how to create a JSON file with my desired modifications, myself. Stay tuned, I guess.
UPDATE: I have indeed configured Karabiner to change my key combos how I wanted them; see the follow-up post for more details.
