Re: OS X Lion and "ApplePressAndHoldEnabled"

[Tim Harper <timcharper@gmail.com>]

On Jun 18, 2011, at 10:29 , Chong Yidong wrote:

> Tim Harper <timcharper@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> In the latest version of OS X Apple has introduced "Press and Hold".
>> In Emacs, it's on by default.  This translates to in Emacs, any
>> alphanumeric key, when held down not in combination of any key
>> modifiers, only one key press is emitted, in contrast with the
>> previous behavior where the key is repeated as fast as your system
>> repeat rate is set.
> 
> Is this documented anywhere?  I find it difficult to imagine that they
> will impose such an incompatible default on all programs.


I can't find any documentation around the setting, any where. I received the tip from a kind gentlemen on IRC (who then invited me to champion the change myself, because for employer related reasons he's unable to). 

I do know that press and hold is a new feature of OS X Lion.  If I hold the letter i, for example, I get a popup prompting to insert one of the following: "î ï í ī į ì" .

Terminal.app / MacVim.app don't inherit the new default (maybe the MacVim developers knew it was coming? I don't know).  I guess the apple developers figured you don't really need to hold down a letter and have it repeat a whole ton of times, which probably in 99% of use cases, they're right.

Tim