[Love Calm Quiet]

So.... exploring some of TextEdit's new powers, I see a "complete" command in the edit menu. "Completely what," I wondered. The keyboard short-cut displayed by it is one I'd never seen before: "opt-(crooked, arrowed, power-on icon)"

I couldn't find it explained in TextEdit help; retreating to my Missing Manual I found that the process invoked is "word completion" and that the short-cut is "opt-esc."

I must be slow, never having noticed that ESC-key symbol before. I'm curious: when did Apple adopt that crooked, arrowed power-on as an escape symbol

[proton]

This has been the symbol that Apple has used for the Esc key since at least Mac OS 8, and possibly earlier. I don't have any pre-Mac OS 8 systems around to verify if they used this symbol too.

- proton

[sushiism]

its not a crooked power on, its an arrow leaving a circle

[tooki]

And it's been around since very early on -- the earliest time I ever saw it was on a vintage 1994 Apple Adjustable Keyboard (Swiss ISO version).

tooki

[Apfhex]

I didn't know TextEdit had that feature! Awesome.

I never really noticed the existence of the Esc symbol myself until I saw it next to Force Quit... in the OS X Apple Menu. It does have a strong resemblance to the power button symbol.

[Deestar]

Originally posted by Apfhex:
I didn't know TextEdit had that feature! Awesome.

I never really noticed the existence of the Esc symbol myself until I saw it next to Force Quit... in the OS X Apple Menu. It does have a strong resemblance to the power button symbol.

You can use the same command in any cocoa app, safari, mail etc...