Talk:Option key

Untitled
The option key is soon to be changes says apple

Bathtub key
I know this button also under the moniker "bathtub key". Google shows only 9 results for that, so decide for yourself if that should be mentioned. Seems to have come over from German, where "badewannen taste" finds lots more. Tierlieb (talk) 15:30, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Why hasn't option key got option written on it?
Is it worth mentioning in the article that many apple computers don't have 'option' written on it? This is utterly confusing for new users who are told to press a key that doesn't seem to be on the keyboard. I can deduce it is the key with 'alt' and a tuning fork on it from the article, but some people will struggle. Also useful to explain why it is called option even though this isn't written on the key. Stub Mandrel (talk) 17:19, 12 May 2018 (UTC).

I agree. Unless Apple is planning to expand this policy and rename all the other keys.. P shall henceforth be known as H, for example..82.134.197.202 (talk) 19:21, 21 October 2018 (UTC)dutchdavey

The two images are beautiful, but they are out of date and not US-English layout (as implied)
The two images are great - one is a MacOS keyboard with just "Option" held and one is with both "Option" and "Shift" held at the same time, and the glyphs produced are shown where the keys are located. My sincerest thanks to the Wikipedian who made these images back in 2009. It is now 2018, and these are out of date. Also, the text of the article implies it is going to talk about the US-English layout. The metadata for the two images does not say which keyboard layout this is, but it is not US-English nor has it ever been, the "Enter" or "Return" key is the wrong shape. These images use the physical enter key shape used in UK-English and most (or all?) European markets for Apple hardware. Whether the euro symbol (€) can be typed with just the option key will depend on localization, not physical layout of the keyboard. These images show it is Option-Shift-2, I don't know where or when that was the case. In some localizations, the key combo that often produces € will produce the currency sign (¤, U+00A4), this depends on software settings (localization preference in MacOS) and not on the physical keyboard, and I suspect the euro sign is getting gradually more popular. The US-EN localization (not physical keyboard layout) changed from ¤ to € with Mac OS Classic 8.5, at the same time as the Mac OS Roman 8-bit character set changed. MacOS no longer uses this 8-bit character set (not often), so both glyphs are widely supported thanks to the Mac adoption of UTF-8. I do not recognize some of the glyphs, likely due to rendering differently in my font and the font used on the Mac OS Roman Wikipedia page, but I am guessing all of these glyphs are in Mac OS Roman. If some of them are not, that would make it even harder to identify. I can tell one of the superscript hollow circles is the superscript lowercase letter O, because it is next to the superscript lowercase A, but in many fonts that glyph is an underlined O, so it doesn't look like the degree symbol. Here are examples of the degree symbol and the superscript O, they may or may not look the same in your browser: 2˚C (two degrees Celsius) vs. 2º grado ("segundo grado" in Spanish, "2nd degree" in English, as in "second degree burn").

In summary, "citation needed" and "update needed". I was trying on Google to figure out what the glyphs are supposed to be (not just what they look like, which is ambiguous), and I really can't figure it out. The º glyph would have been very hard except that it was directly next to the ª glyph, and I happen to know these are also in the Mac OS Roman character set. But a lot of glyphs look like little hollow circles (depending on the font). Fluoborate (talk) 12:49, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for speedy deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for speedy deletion: You can see the reasons for deletion at the file description pages linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:22, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Special-Characters-Mac-Alt-Key-Shift.png
 * Special-Characters-Mac.png

using ascii/windows keyboard
Sometimes people attach ascii/windows keyboards to a mac. We need some information on how to get the "option" function using the ascii/windows keyboard Skysong263 (talk) 03:01, 12 May 2023 (UTC)