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Where am I supposed to learn the meaning of the weird key-combination symbols on a Mac?

I'm specifically talking about the hollow up arrow, the broken switch circuit symbol, the hollow up arrow with a hollow square under it, the caret, the forward arrow with a bar or pipe in front, and the circle with an arrow leading out of it. The only weird symbol I have actually drawn on my keyboard is the command symbol which is like a clover. The other symbols I mentioned respectively mean: shift, option(alt), caps lock, control (only one I got right away), tab, and escape (the most frustrating one).

Clearly these must be documented somewhere (although why they're not on the keyboard is very odd to me) but where are they discussed?

Update: I totally forgot the other, much sillier ones: strike-through caret is enter (number pad), up-left arrow is home, down-right arrow is end, and the fairly more obvious right, u-turn, left arrow is carriage return.

CommandOptionShift!ControlTabReturnEnterDeleteEscapePage UpPage DownHomeEndArrow Keys

I'm missing an image for caps lock, but you see what I mean. I've seen some app short cuts as: CommandOptionEnter which leaves me wondering okay, command-option, what?

Here's the images from Apple's 10.6 article which isn't nicely formatted:

Command Shift
Option Control
Enter Return
Escape
Up Arrow Down Arrow
Left Arrow Right Arrow
Page Up Page Down
Top (Home) End
Delete Forward Delete
Tab Right Tab Left

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2 Answers

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This site lists them, though it's not an official Apple site:

http://www.danrodney.com/mac/

This site lists some (but not all) of them, and it is an official Apple site:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2514

I remember seeing some of these icons drawn on the keyboards of older Apple computers; why they were discontinued, I don't know.

EDIT: I couldn't stop thinking about this question, so I went back for another look. Here are official Apple lists of icons:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/cdb_symbs.html
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/cdb_symbs.html

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The first link is a lot better; I am totally amazed that there's no help article actually on the system. These symbols are pretty bad for people who just switched. I mean Enter, Home, and End... no one has ever used a symbol for those until they use a Mac. – dlamblin Sep 25 '09 at 14:23
The 10.6 article finally seems to get them all, even left tab. – dlamblin Dec 14 '09 at 8:39
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You can activate the "Character palette":

  1. Go to System preferences
  2. Select International
  3. Click on the Input menu tab
  4. At the bottom, check the box Display the input menu in the menu bar
  5. At the top, check the box Character palette

International

Character palette

PS: My system being in French, I am translating these options back to English...

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The US system lists "International" as "Language & Text"; The dialog is the same one that in Textedit (and many other apps) comes up with option-command-T. However, unless you know how to type the "option character" you won't find it's name. You could search by name if you were guessing. – dlamblin Sep 25 '09 at 14:17
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