How do I change which characters OS X considers ‘a word’, for ⌥-arrow-key skipping?
When I type ⌥→, I'd like my cursor to stop at periods, and perhaps other characters.
Does anybody know of a defaults configuration, or System Preferences setting, that changes which characters are considered to be ‘word characters’ by OS X?
Solution 1:
The Word Break option has been removed in Mavericks. Instead:
defaults write .GlobalPreferences AppleTextBreakLocale en_US_POSIX
Sources: https://twitter.com/jaydisc/status/393157866812502016 and http://lri.me/osx.txt
Solution 2:
You can choose from five different word break settings in System Preferences:
I haven't tried the Finnish, Greek, or Japanese settings, but I have found only two differences between the Standard and English (United States, Computer) settings: period and colon are part of words between alphabetic ASCII characters in Standard but not in English (United States, Computer).
ASCII special characters that are part of words between alphabetic ASCII characters:
-
'.:_in Standard -
'_in English (United States, Computer)
ASCII special characters that not part of the ends of words next to alphabetic ASCII characters:
-
$+<=>^`in Standard -
$+<=>^`in English (United States, Computer)
aa.11 or aa'11 are not treated as single words with either setting. 11.11 and aa_11 are treated as single words with both settings.
If you change the word break setting, you have to quit and reopen applications to apply the changes.
If the region is set set to English (United States, Computer) in the third tab, the Standard setting acts like the English (United States, Computer) setting.
Solution 3:
Some apps/editors allow you to choose what characters should be considered to separate words. For example in Sublime Text
