I have been programming on a PC with 101 key keyboard for almost thirty years now. Surprise, when this type of keyboard turned out to be very poorly supported by OSX on a Mac Mini.
as you know, on the mac mini you have to attach your own keyboard. This is fine by me. I have a laptop and a mac mini on a KVA switch so I can use both.
My main problem turned out to be that many of the keyboard habits I developed no longer worked, since they either use the CTRL key (on a PC keyboard this turned out to be the Windows key) or the numeric keypad (to select and to copy-paste)
The windows key and the CTRL key could be easily swapped in the system preferences.
Where I got stuck was with the numeric keypad problem since the mac does not react to NUMLOCK toggle.
Since I googled for a long time and only found pointers to partial solutions, I thought I'd share the solution I came up with eventually:
This solution works for the most part on my mac mini with OSX Yoshemite. Reportedly it works only in modern apps. It does work in Xcode, except one key combination.
Locate or create ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.Dict (the users library) If you need to create it, make sure it's in unicode. Also, if you use Mac Write to edit, turn off automatic quote swapping.
Add the following lines, if the file existed already, leave out the curly brackets of course:
{
"#1" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; /* simulate NUMLOCK OFF /
"$#1" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";
"#2" = "moveDown:";
"$#2" = "moveDownAndModifySelection:";
"#3" = "pageDown:";
"$#3" = "pageDownAndModifySelection:";
"#4" = "moveBackward:";
"$#4" = "moveBackwardAndModifySelection:";
"#5" = ":";
"$#5" = ":";
"#6" = "moveForward:";
"$#6" = "moveForwardAndModifySelection:";
"#7" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";
"$#7" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";
"#8" = "moveUp:";
"$#8" = "moveUpAndModifySelection:";
"#9" = "pageUp:";
"$#9" = "pageUpAndModifySelection:";
"#0" = ":"; / do nothing /
"@#0" = "copy:"; / old windows CTRL-INSERT /
"$#0" = "paste:"; / old windows SHIFT-INSERT */
"#." = "deleteForward:";
}
Log off and on again and all numeric keypad keys now work as if NumLock is OFF
The @#0 and $#0 (CTRL-INS and SHIFT-INS on the numeric keypad, copy and paste) are really old windows shortcuts which do work in windows. The supplied code should thearetically work, but somehow in Xcode anothet action takes precedence.
For completeness, here's the comment of a sample file I found, to explain the different options:
/* ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.Dict
This file remaps the key bindings of a single user on Mac OS X 10.5 to more closely
match default behavior on Windows systems. This particular mapping assumes
that you have also switched the Control and Command keys already.
This key mapping is more appropriate after switching Ctrl for Command in this menu:
Apple->System Preferences->Keyboard & Mouse->Keyboard->Modifier Keys...->
Change Control Key to Command
Change Command key to Control
This applies to OS X 10.5 and possibly other versions.
Here is a rough cheatsheet for syntax.
Key Modifiers
^ : Ctrl
$ : Shift
~ : Option (Alt)
@ : Command (Apple)
# : Numeric Keypad
Non-Printable Key Codes
Up Arrow: \UF700 Backspace: \U0008 F1: \UF704
Down Arrow: \UF701 Tab: \U0009 F2: \UF705
Left Arrow: \UF702 Escape: \U001B F3: \UF706
Right Arrow: \UF703 Enter: \U000A ...
Insert: \UF727 Page Up: \UF72C
Delete: \UF728 Page Down: \UF72D
Home: \UF729 Print Screen: \UF72E
End: \UF72B Scroll Lock: \UF72F
Break: \UF732 Pause: \UF730
SysReq: \UF731 Menu: \UF735
Help: \UF746
NOTE: typically the Windows 'Insert' key is mapped to what Macs call 'Help'.
Regular Mac keyboards don't even have the Insert key, but provide 'Fn' instead,
which is completely different.
*/