Hi Ward,
Sorry that this post sat unanswered for so long! But another user recently asked a similar question, so I thought I'd point you to my answer there.
http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=15834
The essence is that we are quite aware of how idiosyncratic our keyboard and mouse behaviors must seem; we arrived at them after many years of organic development. We're already in the process of cleaning them up and providing a more sensible and coherent approach for our next round of major updates.