9 ms·

Is France's AZERTY keyboard heading for the scrapheap?

48 points by Perados 11y ago

pboutros 11y ago
Having grown up on that keyboard, I can say that I sincerely hope so. Adieu!
cryptos 11y ago
QWERTY is maybe more efficient (for english), but it is not as efficient as it could be. Unfortunately more efficient keyboard layouts are hard to establish.
- nwah1 11y ago
  It isn't so hard to establish. Colemak and its variants are clearly among the most efficient out there, and there are plenty of metrics one can use to judge, such as finger travel distance, alternating distribution of right and left hand use, and concentration of the most commonly used characters on the home row. The problem is mainly that it isn't default, which can make it annoying unless you don't mind buying native colemak keyboards. Changing your caps lock key to a backspace provides most of the finger travel benefits of colemak with much less annoyance.
  - nazgob 11y ago
    While its not default you can get it very easily on Linux and its ready on OSX, just need to pick it. No idea about Windows. For pair programming I use keyboard with hardware Colemak, my pp partner can use whatever that way ;)
    - nwah1 11y ago
      Yes, but now what happens when you need to use someone else's computer? It just makes life a little bit more annoying. De facto standards tend to be very important, so much so that the optimality of that standard is less important than the existence of a standard. I happen to use colemak, but I recognize it was not a rational decision.
      - nazgob 11y ago
        Perhaps I was not clean enough. When I use sb else computer for a longer time I bring my hardware Colemack keyboard with me. If its just a minute or two, I use my now lame touch typing qwerty skills, I'm much slower then Colemack but still faster then most of 'normal' people.
- Johnny_Brahms 11y ago
  You can be bi-keyboardial. On my home computer I use a modified version of swedish dvorak (svdvorak). I thought that since svdvorak isn't available anywhere I might as well go full obscure. I type almost as fast with qwerty, but vastly prefer not having to move my fingers that much. On a separate note: you don't have to be that smart to modify dvorak to something better. Just switching u and i and d and h brings a lot.
fab13n 11y ago
I hope the replacement will be programmer-friendly. I still remap my French keyboards in QWERTY because I never got accustomed to hunt for programming characters on AZERTY keyboards. I don't know how useful it would be to get programmers and IT pros on-board, in order to help adoption.
- mikelward 11y ago
  The article mentions Bepo as an alternative. http://ccm.net/faq/32759-bepo-a-keyboard-layout-optimized-for-the-french-language http://ccm.net/faq/32759-bepo-a-keyboard-layout-optimized-fo... says it is optimized for "typing French and programming languages". Looking at the layout, it seems all programming punctuation is accessible via either Shift or AltGr, so only one modifier. http://static.commentcamarche.net/www.commentcamarche.net/pictures/C0JF2SqY-carte-bepo-complete.png http://static.commentcamarche.net/www.commentcamarche.net/pi...
aikah 11y ago
> The culture ministry has commissioned Paris-based consultancy AFNOR to draw up a list of recommendations by the summer. Yeah, as usual some minister gave money to business owned by a friend or family member for useless study. A french classic. And of course, impossible to know how much this study cost the tax payers ... I don't believe this kind of matter should be a priority of the culture ministry.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Blaque 11y ago
  AFNOR is France's International Organization for Standardization (ISO) member body. They're also a non-profit. There is some cronyism in France but I'm not so sure it's the case here.
kyriakos 11y ago
Too bad most laptops I can find online in Europe are QWERTZ. The only store I found that delivers abroad and has some decent notebooks is amazon.co.uk but I'd prefer something in euro.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  QWERTZ is a German layout. Try Dutch stores.
  - rplnt 11y ago
    Czech Republic and Slovakia use QWERTZ as well. However, most keyboards are double-labeled, so it isn't much of a problem in my opinion.
  - kyriakos 11y ago
    On the contrary I'm looking for QUERTY from German stores.
    - rockdoe 11y ago
      And I'm explaining you why that is difficult and what the alternative is.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- gpvos 11y ago
  Here's a map of where to order your keyboard: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Latin_keyboard_layouts_by_country_in_Europe_map.PNG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Latin_keyboard_layou... . Also, QWERTY is dominant in Poland nowadays; other options are the Baltics, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Spain.
yodsanklai 11y ago
Good riddance! But we've yet to see what they come up with as a replacement. Besides, I'm not sure a different keyboard will help with people laziness and spelling deficiencies. Personally, I'm perfectly fine with my qwerty keyboard, and it doesn't prevent me from typing specific French letters "é, è, ç, à, É ...". It's actually very easy to type these letters on a mac keyboard. Apple did a good job on this. "option - e e = é" "option ` - a = à"... I don't know how to type "oeuf" or "oeil" though.
- rglullis 11y ago
  The US-International layout exists for ages, and allows for composable letters. "áéíóúçãñàâô..." is as simple as getting the accent + letter. I fail to understand why the Brazilian Standardization bodies decided that we needed to get a keyboard with an exclusive letter for "ç" and yet forces composition of everything else.
  - gpvos 11y ago
    This causes excruciating pain when coding, as you can't type a single ', ", or ~ without an obligatory space after it. Instead, I usually install the "Pseudo VT320" keyboard layout from here: http://keyboards.jargon-file.org/ http://keyboards.jargon-file.org/ , which makes the AltGr key act like the Compose key on a Unix keyboard. The Mac keyboard is also bearable.
    - rglullis 11y ago
      "excruciating pain" is a bit of hyperbole, don't you think? Quote keys are still in the home row, it is just a matter of muscle memory to get used to "right pinky at home row, thumb at space bar" to get quotes going. But I am an emacs user, so maybe I just got used to the composability.
      - gpvos 11y ago
        > hyperbole Yeah, and also I guess I shouldn't joke with that. Sorry.
espadrine 11y ago
To those that understand it to mean that AZERTY is dying, it is not. In fact, it is very hard to buy a non-AZERTY laptop in France. It is unlikely to ever go away. I personally would prefer (and do use) a QWERTY with compose key shortcuts. It is obviously easier to write code, but I find writing French also easier that way. Not only do we get the obvious (compose + ' = é, compose + ^ = ê, compose + ` = è), but we also get common non-keyboard characters (compose + C + o = ©, compose + - + > = →, compose + = + e = €, guess how to do ₤ and ¥).
- hk__2 11y ago
  Wouldn’t that be hard to write French given that there are é/è/à everywhere?
- gpvos 11y ago
  On Windows, try "Pseudo VT320" from http://keyboards.jargon-file.org/ http://keyboards.jargon-file.org/ , it has most of these with AltGr as a compose-like key.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  Which one is the compose key? Sitting on mac with American English QWERTY?
  - touristtam 11y ago
    Ha, I am not the only one to wonder! :) I have opted for a US layout a few years ago, regardless of the OS. And I cannot myself going back to a UK/FR layout. Thanks god I don't speak any other language. :p
  - espadrine 11y ago
    The compose key is a concept, not a physical key :) If your operating system supports it, you can bind any key to the compose key, such as the right alt key. Here's a link to several options to get software support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key#Software_support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key#Software_support.
jld89 11y ago
Just make them get the spanish QWERTY. It has all possible accents (even for german). The only exceptions for characters would be for words like "soeur", or "oeil".
- acz 11y ago
  Œœ is not part of the French keyboard layout either
jrcii 11y ago
The article refers to quotation marks as "inverted commas", I've never heard that before.
- mellamoyo 11y ago
  In parts of the US, it's common to hear them referred to as "high comma", especially when spelling a name.
- JadeNB 11y ago
  I think that is the usual English (as opposed to American) terminology. See, for example, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/36944#eid8715028 http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/36944#eid8715028 .
franzpeterfolz 11y ago
Not french, but german. I just recently switched to the neo2 keyboard layout. The hardest thing is unlearning quertz (almost like querty) http://www.neo-layout.org/ http://www.neo-layout.org/ It is highly optimized for the home row on the german vocabulary. Support for Programming is also very good. It has 6 different layers • Lowercase • Uppercase • Special Characters (Braces etc.) • Navigation and Numbers • Greek Alphabet (same layout as normal Characters, ιαεοσ) • Mathematical signs Σℕℝ∂ But I rarely use layer 5 and 6. I think layer 3,4 and 6 could be a good fit for every keyboard layout.
- efes 11y ago
  I live in Zurich and have been thinking of switching.. If you don't mind, I have a couple questions: How did you handle learning it given so many layers? Stickers seem like trouble.. Do you find it better or worse for dealing with use of occasional accents/etc from a 3rd latin language, (i.e. French) than a more traditional compose key route? Thanks!
  - lorenzhs 11y ago
    Hi, I've been using Neo2 for a couple of years now, so maybe I can help you with these. Don't use stickers! You should touch-type neo from the beginning, so avoid looking at the keyboard. I had a print-out next to me for the first couple of weeks. You also don't need to memorize all the layers from the start. I use layers 5 and 6 very very rarely, and for the Greek letters you can mostly guess (α is on a, β on b, ε on e, σ on s, etc). I still don't know everything on layers 5 and 6 (where's the ℵ again?...). Start with the letters and punctuation (layers 1&2 plus bits of 3) and just type a lot of text for a week, maybe picking up things on layer 3 as you go. It'll be painfully slow at first and your fingers might feel strangely exhausted (I never learned touch typing with QWERTZ) but you'll get faster soon :) It took me two to three weeks to get to a level where typing wasn't a total point and another couple of weeks to exceed my old typing speed. The most helpful thing was to jump right in and never switch back to QWERTZ -- total immersion. I was a student at the time so I could take that luxury, but if you have a job you might not have that luxury. I have no idea how to best go about learning Neo if you still need to be able to type quickly while learning. I rarely use Layer 4, I should probably learn that, but with a TrackPoint navigation is very easy without leaving the home row. Occasional accents are no problem at all, Neo has combining diacritics (dead keys) so it's similar to a compose approach (i.e. you press ` then e to get è, or ° a to get å). Very easy. They're all on the key left of backspace, the one below it, and the one left of 1.
jernfrost 11y ago
I think a lot of Europeans suffer over their keyboard layouts. I am Norwegian and a software developer. I hate Norwegian keyboard layout. It makes programming so much more awkward because the {}, [] and ; symbols used a lot in programming are not easily accessible. There is also a kind of tyranny in how computer companies deal with language. It is next to impossible to get an english layout Apple keyboard in Norway. Also Apple, and I pretty sure MS does the same treat language as a totally binary thing. Like either you write only english or only german, norwegian, french or whatever. For the non english speakers among us, especially those from small countries like Norway we mix in a lot of english in our writing. But spell checking software isn't really designed to handle that.
- LoSboccacc 11y ago
  like this? http://www.apple.com/no/shop/product/MB110FN/B/apple-tastatur-med-talltastatur http://www.apple.com/no/shop/product/MB110FN/B/apple-tastatu...
- yodsanklai 11y ago
  > It is next to impossible to get an english layout Apple keyboard in Norway. I'm surprised. Each time I ordered a laptop on the Apple Store, there was the option to choose the keyboard layout. > For the non english speakers among us, especially those from small countries like Norway we mix in a lot of english in our writing. But spell checking software isn't really designed to handle that. (Sorry to contradict you :)) But again, I found Mac OS to be very good at guessing the language I'm using in a text input field. I could type French now and it would be able to correct it! maybe it's not as polished for Norvergian. The only think I miss is the ability to lookup the definition of a French or Spanish word. By default, it only looks up english definitions when you click on words (if somebody knows how to achieve this, i'm interested!). > I think a lot of Europeans suffer over their keyboard layouts. Actually, I'm pretty fine with the AZERTY keyboard, even for programming. What I dislike is that I have to use both. My computer have qwerty keyboards, but sometimes I have to use French keyboard on other people's computers...
  - jeffreyrogers 11y ago
nerdcity 11y ago
Blank Keycaps is the way.
Aetherix 11y ago
In Belgium, even in the Dutch speaking part of the country AZERTY is used. It's not that common to find QWERTY keyboards in stores. Since I'm a software developer I've switched to US layout some years ago and never looked back.
- acz 11y ago
  But you can go to Netherlands to buy one. Luckily the company I work for provides QWERTY and AZERTY laptops to its employees.
rasz_pl 11y ago
>Most people think that ignoring an accent on a capital letter is acceptable Of course it is! In Poland its perfectly reasonable to ignore all "weird" polish characters. Ą ą Ć ć Ę ę Ł ł Ń ń Ó ó Ś ś Ź ź Ż ż? hell no. I started using computers in ~90, never ever in my life configured local keyboard variant. >commissioned Paris-based consultancy AFNOR to draw up a list of recommendations by the summer brilliant, nothing like one more standard to ignore! offtopic: BBC Video volume slider goes to 11 (haha), but is too quiet even at full volume :(. BBC should have people/systems responsible for this type of stuff, its not rocket science to normalize volume :/. You can always lower volume on the client if its too loud, but there are no easy ways of making very quiet stuff louder (other than passing it thru sound editor).
gizi 11y ago
I've dropped AZERTY more than 10 years ago. Nowadays I use QWERTY with "US, international with dead keys" as keyboard layout. It works much better than AZERTY. You don't need to remember where all the accented letters are on the keyboard. You just compose them logically with the `'", characters. It pretty much allows for composing any French (accent) German (umlaut) diacritical. The only difficulty is typing a ç. You need to switch on the third level, assign it to a dead key (such as ALT) and then you can compose it as alt+C. The "third level" does not work out-of-the-box.
- acz 11y ago
  In the default US International Çç is AltGr + , Also if you are on Windows you can use Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) which is a free tool to develop keyboard layouts.
sberder 11y ago
And once again, the "standard to rule them all" dream * insert relevant xkcd strip here * , finding a keyboard layout that would allow easy typing in French and all France's languages (Breton, Basque, etc) and dialects (Catalan, Provençal, etc). Impossible task to bring both easy typing and support for all of those. It seems to me that it's a problem (or bunch of problems) that already has a solution(s). I'm right now using a QWERTY layout under Linux. I can code and type English directly, use the compose key to type in French, German and Breton and use a keyboard input (currently fcitx) to type in Chinese. Add to this the fact that you can easily input complex signs that you wouldn't find on keyboards like µ or €. And all this is actually pretty easy to use. I'm sure there are equivalents in Microsoft and MacOS. Why look further?

48 points by Perados 11y ago

Having grown up on that keyboard, I can say that I sincerely hope so. Adieu!

QWERTY is maybe more efficient (for english), but it is not as efficient as it could be. Unfortunately more efficient keyboard layouts are hard to establish.

nwah1 11y ago
It isn't so hard to establish. Colemak and its variants are clearly among the most efficient out there, and there are plenty of metrics one can use to judge, such as finger travel distance, alternating distribution of right and left hand use, and concentration of the most commonly used characters on the home row. The problem is mainly that it isn't default, which can make it annoying unless you don't mind buying native colemak keyboards. Changing your caps lock key to a backspace provides most of the finger travel benefits of colemak with much less annoyance.
- nazgob 11y ago
  While its not default you can get it very easily on Linux and its ready on OSX, just need to pick it. No idea about Windows. For pair programming I use keyboard with hardware Colemak, my pp partner can use whatever that way ;)
  - nwah1 11y ago
    Yes, but now what happens when you need to use someone else's computer? It just makes life a little bit more annoying. De facto standards tend to be very important, so much so that the optimality of that standard is less important than the existence of a standard. I happen to use colemak, but I recognize it was not a rational decision.
    - nazgob 11y ago
      Perhaps I was not clean enough. When I use sb else computer for a longer time I bring my hardware Colemack keyboard with me. If its just a minute or two, I use my now lame touch typing qwerty skills, I'm much slower then Colemack but still faster then most of 'normal' people.
Johnny_Brahms 11y ago
You can be bi-keyboardial. On my home computer I use a modified version of swedish dvorak (svdvorak). I thought that since svdvorak isn't available anywhere I might as well go full obscure. I type almost as fast with qwerty, but vastly prefer not having to move my fingers that much. On a separate note: you don't have to be that smart to modify dvorak to something better. Just switching u and i and d and h brings a lot.

fab13n 11y ago

I hope the replacement will be programmer-friendly. I still remap my French keyboards in QWERTY because I never got accustomed to hunt for programming characters on AZERTY keyboards. I don't know how useful it would be to get programmers and IT pros on-board, in order to help adoption.

mikelward 11y ago
The article mentions Bepo as an alternative. http://ccm.net/faq/32759-bepo-a-keyboard-layout-optimized-for-the-french-language http://ccm.net/faq/32759-bepo-a-keyboard-layout-optimized-fo... says it is optimized for "typing French and programming languages". Looking at the layout, it seems all programming punctuation is accessible via either Shift or AltGr, so only one modifier. http://static.commentcamarche.net/www.commentcamarche.net/pictures/C0JF2SqY-carte-bepo-complete.png http://static.commentcamarche.net/www.commentcamarche.net/pi...

aikah 11y ago

> The culture ministry has commissioned Paris-based consultancy AFNOR to draw up a list of recommendations by the summer. Yeah, as usual some minister gave money to business owned by a friend or family member for useless study. A french classic. And of course, impossible to know how much this study cost the tax payers ... I don't believe this kind of matter should be a priority of the culture ministry.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Blaque 11y ago
AFNOR is France's International Organization for Standardization (ISO) member body. They're also a non-profit. There is some cronyism in France but I'm not so sure it's the case here.

kyriakos 11y ago

Too bad most laptops I can find online in Europe are QWERTZ. The only store I found that delivers abroad and has some decent notebooks is amazon.co.uk but I'd prefer something in euro.

rockdoe 11y ago
QWERTZ is a German layout. Try Dutch stores.
- rplnt 11y ago
  Czech Republic and Slovakia use QWERTZ as well. However, most keyboards are double-labeled, so it isn't much of a problem in my opinion.
- kyriakos 11y ago
  On the contrary I'm looking for QUERTY from German stores.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    And I'm explaining you why that is difficult and what the alternative is.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
gpvos 11y ago
Here's a map of where to order your keyboard: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Latin_keyboard_layouts_by_country_in_Europe_map.PNG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Latin_keyboard_layou... . Also, QWERTY is dominant in Poland nowadays; other options are the Baltics, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Spain.

yodsanklai 11y ago

Good riddance! But we've yet to see what they come up with as a replacement. Besides, I'm not sure a different keyboard will help with people laziness and spelling deficiencies. Personally, I'm perfectly fine with my qwerty keyboard, and it doesn't prevent me from typing specific French letters "é, è, ç, à, É ...". It's actually very easy to type these letters on a mac keyboard. Apple did a good job on this. "option - e e = é" "option ` - a = à"... I don't know how to type "oeuf" or "oeil" though.

rglullis 11y ago
The US-International layout exists for ages, and allows for composable letters. "áéíóúçãñàâô..." is as simple as getting the accent + letter. I fail to understand why the Brazilian Standardization bodies decided that we needed to get a keyboard with an exclusive letter for "ç" and yet forces composition of everything else.
- gpvos 11y ago
  This causes excruciating pain when coding, as you can't type a single ', ", or ~ without an obligatory space after it. Instead, I usually install the "Pseudo VT320" keyboard layout from here: http://keyboards.jargon-file.org/ http://keyboards.jargon-file.org/ , which makes the AltGr key act like the Compose key on a Unix keyboard. The Mac keyboard is also bearable.
  - rglullis 11y ago
    "excruciating pain" is a bit of hyperbole, don't you think? Quote keys are still in the home row, it is just a matter of muscle memory to get used to "right pinky at home row, thumb at space bar" to get quotes going. But I am an emacs user, so maybe I just got used to the composability.
    - gpvos 11y ago
      > hyperbole Yeah, and also I guess I shouldn't joke with that. Sorry.

espadrine 11y ago

To those that understand it to mean that AZERTY is dying, it is not. In fact, it is very hard to buy a non-AZERTY laptop in France. It is unlikely to ever go away. I personally would prefer (and do use) a QWERTY with compose key shortcuts. It is obviously easier to write code, but I find writing French also easier that way. Not only do we get the obvious (compose + ' = é, compose + ^ = ê, compose + ` = è), but we also get common non-keyboard characters (compose + C + o = ©, compose + - + > = →, compose + = + e = €, guess how to do ₤ and ¥).

hk__2 11y ago
Wouldn’t that be hard to write French given that there are é/è/à everywhere?
gpvos 11y ago
On Windows, try "Pseudo VT320" from http://keyboards.jargon-file.org/ http://keyboards.jargon-file.org/ , it has most of these with AltGr as a compose-like key.
wodenokoto 11y ago
Which one is the compose key? Sitting on mac with American English QWERTY?
- touristtam 11y ago
  Ha, I am not the only one to wonder! :) I have opted for a US layout a few years ago, regardless of the OS. And I cannot myself going back to a UK/FR layout. Thanks god I don't speak any other language. :p
- espadrine 11y ago
  The compose key is a concept, not a physical key :) If your operating system supports it, you can bind any key to the compose key, such as the right alt key. Here's a link to several options to get software support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key#Software_support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key#Software_support.

jld89 11y ago

Just make them get the spanish QWERTY. It has all possible accents (even for german). The only exceptions for characters would be for words like "soeur", or "oeil".

acz 11y ago
Œœ is not part of the French keyboard layout either

jrcii 11y ago

The article refers to quotation marks as "inverted commas", I've never heard that before.

mellamoyo 11y ago
In parts of the US, it's common to hear them referred to as "high comma", especially when spelling a name.
JadeNB 11y ago
I think that is the usual English (as opposed to American) terminology. See, for example, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/36944#eid8715028 http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/36944#eid8715028 .

franzpeterfolz 11y ago

Not french, but german. I just recently switched to the neo2 keyboard layout. The hardest thing is unlearning quertz (almost like querty) http://www.neo-layout.org/ http://www.neo-layout.org/ It is highly optimized for the home row on the german vocabulary. Support for Programming is also very good. It has 6 different layers • Lowercase • Uppercase • Special Characters (Braces etc.) • Navigation and Numbers • Greek Alphabet (same layout as normal Characters, ιαεοσ) • Mathematical signs Σℕℝ∂ But I rarely use layer 5 and 6. I think layer 3,4 and 6 could be a good fit for every keyboard layout.

efes 11y ago
I live in Zurich and have been thinking of switching.. If you don't mind, I have a couple questions: How did you handle learning it given so many layers? Stickers seem like trouble.. Do you find it better or worse for dealing with use of occasional accents/etc from a 3rd latin language, (i.e. French) than a more traditional compose key route? Thanks!
- lorenzhs 11y ago
  Hi, I've been using Neo2 for a couple of years now, so maybe I can help you with these. Don't use stickers! You should touch-type neo from the beginning, so avoid looking at the keyboard. I had a print-out next to me for the first couple of weeks. You also don't need to memorize all the layers from the start. I use layers 5 and 6 very very rarely, and for the Greek letters you can mostly guess (α is on a, β on b, ε on e, σ on s, etc). I still don't know everything on layers 5 and 6 (where's the ℵ again?...). Start with the letters and punctuation (layers 1&2 plus bits of 3) and just type a lot of text for a week, maybe picking up things on layer 3 as you go. It'll be painfully slow at first and your fingers might feel strangely exhausted (I never learned touch typing with QWERTZ) but you'll get faster soon :) It took me two to three weeks to get to a level where typing wasn't a total point and another couple of weeks to exceed my old typing speed. The most helpful thing was to jump right in and never switch back to QWERTZ -- total immersion. I was a student at the time so I could take that luxury, but if you have a job you might not have that luxury. I have no idea how to best go about learning Neo if you still need to be able to type quickly while learning. I rarely use Layer 4, I should probably learn that, but with a TrackPoint navigation is very easy without leaving the home row. Occasional accents are no problem at all, Neo has combining diacritics (dead keys) so it's similar to a compose approach (i.e. you press ` then e to get è, or ° a to get å). Very easy. They're all on the key left of backspace, the one below it, and the one left of 1.

jernfrost 11y ago

I think a lot of Europeans suffer over their keyboard layouts. I am Norwegian and a software developer. I hate Norwegian keyboard layout. It makes programming so much more awkward because the {}, [] and ; symbols used a lot in programming are not easily accessible. There is also a kind of tyranny in how computer companies deal with language. It is next to impossible to get an english layout Apple keyboard in Norway. Also Apple, and I pretty sure MS does the same treat language as a totally binary thing. Like either you write only english or only german, norwegian, french or whatever. For the non english speakers among us, especially those from small countries like Norway we mix in a lot of english in our writing. But spell checking software isn't really designed to handle that.

LoSboccacc 11y ago
like this? http://www.apple.com/no/shop/product/MB110FN/B/apple-tastatur-med-talltastatur http://www.apple.com/no/shop/product/MB110FN/B/apple-tastatu...
yodsanklai 11y ago
> It is next to impossible to get an english layout Apple keyboard in Norway. I'm surprised. Each time I ordered a laptop on the Apple Store, there was the option to choose the keyboard layout. > For the non english speakers among us, especially those from small countries like Norway we mix in a lot of english in our writing. But spell checking software isn't really designed to handle that. (Sorry to contradict you :)) But again, I found Mac OS to be very good at guessing the language I'm using in a text input field. I could type French now and it would be able to correct it! maybe it's not as polished for Norvergian. The only think I miss is the ability to lookup the definition of a French or Spanish word. By default, it only looks up english definitions when you click on words (if somebody knows how to achieve this, i'm interested!). > I think a lot of Europeans suffer over their keyboard layouts. Actually, I'm pretty fine with the AZERTY keyboard, even for programming. What I dislike is that I have to use both. My computer have qwerty keyboards, but sometimes I have to use French keyboard on other people's computers...
- jeffreyrogers 11y ago

nerdcity 11y ago

Blank Keycaps is the way.

Aetherix 11y ago

In Belgium, even in the Dutch speaking part of the country AZERTY is used. It's not that common to find QWERTY keyboards in stores. Since I'm a software developer I've switched to US layout some years ago and never looked back.

acz 11y ago
But you can go to Netherlands to buy one. Luckily the company I work for provides QWERTY and AZERTY laptops to its employees.

rasz_pl 11y ago

>Most people think that ignoring an accent on a capital letter is acceptable Of course it is! In Poland its perfectly reasonable to ignore all "weird" polish characters. Ą ą Ć ć Ę ę Ł ł Ń ń Ó ó Ś ś Ź ź Ż ż? hell no. I started using computers in ~90, never ever in my life configured local keyboard variant. >commissioned Paris-based consultancy AFNOR to draw up a list of recommendations by the summer brilliant, nothing like one more standard to ignore! offtopic: BBC Video volume slider goes to 11 (haha), but is too quiet even at full volume :(. BBC should have people/systems responsible for this type of stuff, its not rocket science to normalize volume :/. You can always lower volume on the client if its too loud, but there are no easy ways of making very quiet stuff louder (other than passing it thru sound editor).

gizi 11y ago

I've dropped AZERTY more than 10 years ago. Nowadays I use QWERTY with "US, international with dead keys" as keyboard layout. It works much better than AZERTY. You don't need to remember where all the accented letters are on the keyboard. You just compose them logically with the `'", characters. It pretty much allows for composing any French (accent) German (umlaut) diacritical. The only difficulty is typing a ç. You need to switch on the third level, assign it to a dead key (such as ALT) and then you can compose it as alt+C. The "third level" does not work out-of-the-box.

acz 11y ago
In the default US International Çç is AltGr + , Also if you are on Windows you can use Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) which is a free tool to develop keyboard layouts.

sberder 11y ago

And once again, the "standard to rule them all" dream * insert relevant xkcd strip here * , finding a keyboard layout that would allow easy typing in French and all France's languages (Breton, Basque, etc) and dialects (Catalan, Provençal, etc). Impossible task to bring both easy typing and support for all of those. It seems to me that it's a problem (or bunch of problems) that already has a solution(s). I'm right now using a QWERTY layout under Linux. I can code and type English directly, use the compose key to type in French, German and Breton and use a keyboard input (currently fcitx) to type in Chinese. Add to this the fact that you can easily input complex signs that you wouldn't find on keyboards like µ or €. And all this is actually pretty easy to use. I'm sure there are equivalents in Microsoft and MacOS. Why look further?