magi,

My problems with key mappings stem from the fact that I'm a recent switcher to the Mac OS after about 15 years of using a Windows box, plus I have a development job which requires that I work with Windows extensively. To make it easier for me to switch back and forth between the two operating systems, I have used the Keyboard and Mouse "Key Mapping" dialog in the Mac's System Preferences to remap the Command (Cmd) key to the Control (Ctrl) key and the Ctrl key to the Cmd key.

This mapping is great because most key combinations in Windows use the Ctrl key and most key combinations in Mac use the Cmd key yet between the two *physical* machines, it's basically the same for my poor fingers!

The big problem with this is that Fusion automatically maps the Windows Ctrl key to the Ctrl key on the Mac and since I've remapped it, the Mac's *physical* Cmd key becomes the Ctrl key in Windows and now I'm back to the same problem of tripping over every single key combo I might try to do in Windows.

I wish Fusion let me remap keys the same way so that for Fusion, I could "remap my remapped" keys such that Ctrl goes back to the physical Ctrl key and Cmd goes back to the physical Cmd key, and this only when Fusion has the input focus.

Sorry for the dumb question, but how do I the swap of the location of the control and command keys like I can do in Parallels? My fingers are trained to use Cmd-C, Cmd-S, etc. on the Mac side, and I would like to do the same in Windows.

Parallels has a simple option to do the switch. Is there a VMWare equivalent? Swapping the Command and the Alt keys are not quite what I want.

P.S. Loving VMWare, especially the extra memory space and virtual processor that I get over Parallels!

Is there also a way to change the second return key like on Macbooks as AltGr key?

This feature was very usefull in Parallels, because in windows you often do need backslash-characters.

In my version, 1.0 (51348), the file is ~/Library/Preferences/VMWare Fusion/preferences. I changed it there and it worked.

There is a particular fix for a lot of these issues that I can't believe that noone has mentioned yet, being the excellent "input remapper" for macbooks.

I thought almost all boot camp users was on this one, I could certainly not manage wihtout it.

This allows complete flexibility, myself I have:

ctrl - fn - win - alt

but all options are possible.

Seems fusion doesn't send the fn key, this is not optimal but have obvious purpose, it can easily be sacrificed.

fn -ctr - win - alt

is what I have set it to now, and that works a charm.

A big bonus is that the standard setup includes alt gr mapping of the right apple button, also works.

What is not working is having the enter key remapped to right click, a fantastic concept that I would love to have in osx as well since it is available while using the touchpad. Some fix for this with input remapper would be very nice, a year into using mostly solely the mbp for windows that is about as mapped into my hands as ctrl on the rightmost was when I started using boot camp ...

A possible solution for almost all of the xp/mac keyboard issue is if there could be option of manually swapping fn and ctrl ala the fix mentioned at the top of the thread. It is not a problem not to have an fn key, but it occupies the space of the windows ctrl key. There are very few other issues left that can't then be handled rather easily with input remapper.

As an example, it is only a few minutes to map all of ctrl - v, ctrl - a and so on to command (in my setup, now alt) - v and so on. Alt - v or any other alt shortcuts have not conflicted yet in any app I use -- obviously the problem would be to access native program shortcuts, not unpredictable results. It is often possible to change program shortcuts, and there are also functionality in input remapper I believe to address such issues. It shouldn't be a problem to make a ready settings file for vmware for input remapper featuring this.

Input remapper being free software, it is well possible that you could be able to rent the code and integrate something slightly more user friendly into you control center -- it is important though that it be left as an option to run the original program, as that also takes care of fan speed in boot camp XP. This solution could with quite limited work allow having a button in the tools section with "use apple copy and selection shortcuts", as an example -- I am doing it now and it is solid.

URLs doesn't seem to be working from Opera or just now, but input remapper can be found at;

http://www.olofsson.info/