The AZERTY argument

[mecano]

By many aspects French Canadian layout got it better indeed.

Are you really saying that this is better ?



That thing looks like worse, to be honest, why would you need the symbol on the P ? 1/4 ? there is no è ? there is no à ? ç ?

Surely this wasn't made because french canadians are trying to be "smart" or different from the others ...

It's better still, punctuation, numerals, preserve shortcuts naming mnemonics are few exemples.

[Myoth]

mnemonics from the french or the english keyboard ? Because it's a french canadian keyboard and it's hard to see myself typing in french on this thing ... It's good if you come from QWERTY, sure. But not if you come from AZERTY... it's really not.

You probably don't know how hard it is to type french when you need to press 2 keys to make a single caracter, that's why I didn't switch to ANSI or ISO-UK fully. And if you do know how hard it is, then you're probably typing not much in french or not caring about orthography.

[mecano]

I used azerty most of my life, switched to qwerty with custom unicode diacritics and touch typing.
The custom unicode diacritics allow me to type a letter then modifying it.
Par exemple, je tape abstractise, j'ajoute l'accent, abstractisè, puis je tape le reste du mot, abstractisèrent.
I should have switch to bépo or dvorak but going to qwerty was far more easier.
Qwerty is also a flawed design for today use and so are staggered keyboards. All these were made for palliating typewriters mechanical bad engineering.
But qwerty allows you to keep afloat with professional softwares standard shortcuts, and most of the time using these softwares in French doesn't cut it whether it be to browse and exploit ressources or follow tutorials, courses or troubleshooting resolutions.

[Darkshado]

I grew up with, and currently use the French Canadian layout.

One advantage is that even ZXCV are in the "correct" position for anything involving the clipboard. Other shortcuts located on adjacent letters on QWERTY layouts are still correct; those are often left unchanged during localization.

One thing I did notice back in university is that the majority of my French expat classmates, studying computer science, switched to either the Canadian French, Canadian Multilingual (Macs use it by default) or US ANSI layouts; would be interesting to get actual stats here.

Myoth, I most certainly care about orthography and yet I'm used to typing two keys to get ç, è et al. The Canadian Multilingual has them as single keypresses, but I dislike it for other reasons: mainly the placement of brackets and braces.

I briefly considered switching to BÉPO but rejected the idea:
-The layout is not present on Windows natively: not an issue at home, but is one at work.
-Read comments on the layout being excellent for French, but pretty bad (i.e. noticeably worse than QWERTY) for C style syntax and English.

About Dvorak, given its design philosophy, how does it do in French?
Edit: typo found while searching for something else

[kbdfr]

[…] is also a flawed design for today use and so are staggered keyboards. All these were made for palliating typewriters mechanical bad engineering. […]

On mechanical typewriters it was not bad engineering, but a sound solution. Each key activated a bar which made the corresponding lever hit the paper, and thanks to the (by today' standards) weird staggering the bars didn't interfere:

staggering.jpg (184.89 KiB) Viewed 5938 times

But qwerty allows you to keep afloat with professional softwares standard shortcuts, and most of the time using these softwares in French doesn't cut it whether it be to browse and exploit ressources or follow tutorials, courses or troubleshooting resolutions.

Which software is used probably differs which each user, but anyway even using AZERTY in a completely German (!) OS environment with German software I have no problem whatsoever with standard shortcuts: Ctrl-C remains Ctrl-C, Shift-F4 remains Shift-F4.

[seebart]

zcpyo.jpg (34.53 KiB) Viewed 5935 times

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Could typewriters have used offset keycaps, like those in the collimation optical keyboards? Those were still staggered, but presumably the same principle could be applied to get a matrix layout.

[kbdfr]

zcpyo.jpg

got the pun?

[kbdfr]

Could typewriters have used offset keycaps, like those in the collimation optical keyboards? Those were still staggered, but presumably the same principle could be applied to get a matrix layout.

It would have meant pressing keys off center, thus not only raising the (considerable*) force needed, but also making it different for different keys.



*

Spoiler:

Believe me - I learnt typing on such a monster typewriter

[seebart]

zcpyo.jpg

got the pun?

Sure, French humour is not as abstract as British.

[mecano]

On mechanical typewriters it was not bad engineering, but a sound solution. Each key activated a bar which made the corresponding lever hit the paper, and thanks to the (by today' standards) weird staggering the bars didn't interfere:

If you restrict the user by design (because of the limitations induced by a bad design), it is bad engineering.
Why were typeballs to become so revolutionary then?

Which software is used probably differs which each user, but anyway even using AZERTY in a completely German (!) OS environment with German software I have no problem whatsoever with standard shortcuts: Ctrl-C remains Ctrl-C, Shift-F4 remains Shift-F4.

On Mac, upon a time, I couldn't count the number of time I would quit an application instead of selecting all…
But I was more talking about particular softwares not OSes.
A simple example; in an english version of 'software doe' left and right are on keys < and >, where are these on azerty?
There even was a time in Photoshop you couldn't zoom in if you were on an azerty mac.

[mecano]

I briefly considered switching to BÉPO but rejected the idea:
-The layout is not present on Windows natively: not an issue at home, but is one at work.
-Read comments on the layout being excellent for French, but pretty bad (i.e. noticeably worse than QWERTY) for C style syntax and English.

About Dvorak, given its design philosophy, how does it do in French?

There is another solution, get yourself a keyboard running TMK or QMK and use Unicode (not sure about TMK Unicode support but I use QMK and it's great), so no need of a layout.
I have no experience in programming with Bépo but looks like some are enjoying it, note also that Bépo is constantly evolving behind the main layout and there are adapted versions. But yes main reason I did not switch to it as well.
No idea about Dvorak, I expect it to be not very good as it is made for English.

[mecano]

zcpyo.jpg

got the pun?

Sure, French humour is not as abstract as British.

There is no such thing as french humour, humour is british, « nous, nous faisons de l'esprit ».
You should watch the last ten minutes of this movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117477/?ref_=nv_sr_1

[mecano]

Could typewriters have used offset keycaps, like those in the collimation optical keyboards? Those were still staggered, but presumably the same principle could be applied to get a matrix layout.

Wow, optical! Amazing design!
Was there ever a mylar foil differential impedance driven keyboard?
Because wha pedals went that way, mechanical levers, mylar foil contact, optical.

[kbdfr]

On mechanical typewriters it was not bad engineering, but a sound solution. Each key activated a bar which made the corresponding lever hit the paper, and thanks to the (by today' standards) weird staggering the bars didn't interfere:

If you restrict the user by design (because of the limitations induced by a bad design), it is bad engineering.
Why were typeballs to become so revolutionary then?

I am not aware of typeballs on mechanical keyboards
How would you have designed such a mechanical lever typewriter? Each bar had to move freely, so a matrix layout would have needed a vertically distinct "bar layer" for each row, and you still had to design the connection to the "basket" of levers.
You call it "bad design" because you know how technology has since evolved - how easy.

Which software is used probably differs which each user, but anyway even using AZERTY in a completely German (!) OS environment with German software I have no problem whatsoever with standard shortcuts: Ctrl-C remains Ctrl-C, Shift-F4 remains Shift-F4.

On Mac, upon a time, I couldn't count the number of time I would quit an application instead of selecting all…
But I was more talking about particular softwares not OSes.

On Mac?

A simple example; in an english version of 'software doe' left and right are on keys < and >, where are these on azerty? […]

They are on the key which is missing on ANSI boards: right of the short left Shift.
But why should < and > be used for left and right anyway when there are cursor keys? Put the blame on the (probably US, as you say "english version") software, not on the keyboard.
It is not bad keyboard design, but generally US-centered design (like, for example, the original ASCII table not only missing, but having no place for, diacritics - after all, they don't exist in English).

Anyway, millions of people actually type on AZERTY keyboards. While it is far from being perfect, it is perfectly usable.

[mecano]

You call it "bad design" because you know how technology has since evolved - how easy.

No, I call it bad design because it doesn't adapt to the human but forces the human to adapt to it in an atrocious way.
How about clothes that force you to walk in diagonal because the designer was lazy?

They are on the key which is missing on ANSI boards: right of the short left Shift.
But why should < and > be used for left and right anyway when there are cursor keys? Put the blame on the (probably US, as you say "english version") software, not on the keyboard.
It is not bad keyboard design, but generally US-centered design (like, for example, the original ASCII table not only missing, but having no place for, diacritics - after all, they don't exist in English).

Completely agree with you and didn't blame the layout for this, but it renders it unusable then isn't?

Anyway, millions of people actually type on AZERTY keyboards. While it is far from being perfect, it is perfectly usable.

Agreed, there are far better solutions depending on the use you intend.

[kbdfr]

You call it "bad design" because you know how technology has since evolved - how easy.

No, I call it bad design because it doesn't adapt to the human but forces the human to adapt to it in an atrocious way.
How about clothes that force you to walk in diagonal because the designer was lazy? […]

"atrocious", "bad design", "lazy" designer - you just won't acknowledge (and are even full of disdain for) achievements which were quite revolutionary at the time and became state of the art for good reasons.

Compared to preceding devices, the mechanical lever typewriter was a huge progress: you just had to press down a given key with a finger to print a given character, and this made fast, and even very fast, typing possible. In addition, the paper you were typing on was placed in front of you, you could actually see what you were writing. No wonder it became standard.

Now imagine it were something like 1880 and you would want to design a device allowing you to print text on paper.
Would you find a better solution?

[j0d1]

mnemonics from the french or the english keyboard ? Because it's a french canadian keyboard and it's hard to see myself typing in french on this thing ... It's good if you come from QWERTY, sure. But not if you come from AZERTY... it's really not.

I agree with you, for AZERTY users, the french canadian layout is a challenge.
For bilingual canadians however, it makes sense... but it could be better.

I am a french canadian and I'm a programmer in Montreal so I have to 1) write code in English and 2) communicate with my colleagues in French. I'm constantly switching between the two layouts (I use ALT+F1 for English and ALT+F2 for French).

I don't know if I'm the only one doing this but I switch to French only to use é, à, û, ç, ù, ... and that's it!
I'm so used to code in English that for any other character (ex: `, [, ], {, }, /, \, ...), I most use the English layout.

[mecano]

You call it "bad design" because you know how technology has since evolved - how easy.

No, I call it bad design because it doesn't adapt to the human but forces the human to adapt to it in an atrocious way.
How about clothes that force you to walk in diagonal because the designer was lazy? […]

"atrocious", "bad design", "lazy" designer - you just won't acknowledge (and are even full of disdain for) achievements which were quite revolutionary at the time and became state of the art for good reasons.

Compared to preceding devices, the mechanical lever typewriter was a huge progress: you just had to press down a given key with a finger to print a given character, and this made fast, and even very fast, typing possible. In addition, the paper you were typing on was placed in front of you, you could actually see what you were writing. No wonder it became standard.

Now imagine it were something like 1880 and you would want to design a device allowing you to print text on paper.
Would you find a better solution?

Are you going to simplify and degrade everything I am saying?

Yes : Printing Press

[mecano]

btw not all early typewriters designs were staggered jamming devices. It's not because something is the norm that it is good.

[seebart]

There is no such thing as french humour, humour is british, « nous, nous faisons de l'esprit ».
You should watch the last ten minutes of this movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117477/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Really? All I can say Louis de Funès was brilliant and French! I'll check that movie out.

[Myoth]

On mechanical typewriters it was not bad engineering, but a sound solution. Each key activated a bar which made the corresponding lever hit the paper, and thanks to the (by today' standards) weird staggering the bars didn't interfere:

If you restrict the user by design (because of the limitations induced by a bad design), it is bad engineering.
Why were typeballs to become so revolutionary then?

So revolutionary nobody really use them ?

There is no such thing as french humour

Right, Louis de Funès, Bourvil, Michel Galabru, some of many names I could cite and they haven't their own thing. Nice joke.

Printing Press

No, with Typewriters you could write as people spoke, how do you do that with a printing press ?

[Myoth]

mnemonics from the french or the english keyboard ? Because it's a french canadian keyboard and it's hard to see myself typing in french on this thing ... It's good if you come from QWERTY, sure. But not if you come from AZERTY... it's really not.

I don't know if I'm the only one doing this but I switch to French only to use é, à, û, ç, ù, ... and that's it!
I'm so used to code in English that for any other character (ex: `, [, ], {, }, /, \, ...), I most use the English layout.

That's exactly what I mean, AZERTY is really useful is you're typing in french ! I would use anything else to type in french.

Though, yes, QWERTY, is the best to type in english. (I'd even say ISO-UK because ISO is always better )

[davkol]

Compared to preceding devices, the mechanical lever typewriter was a huge progress: you just had to press down a given key with a finger to print a given character, and this made fast, and even very fast, typing possible. In addition, the paper you were typing on was placed in front of you, you could actually see what you were writing. No wonder it became standard.

No, the typist couldn't see the result of their keystrokes until about 1900:

The Oliver Typewriter was the first effective "visible print" typewriter, meaning text was visible to the typist as it was entered.

The other such typewriters were Underwood front strike, which became an industry standard, but it used a different typebasket design that didn't benefit from the QWERTY principle for separating typebars to prevent jamming, though, and so it was a regression in a way.

[gkubed]

mnemonics from the french or the english keyboard ? Because it's a french canadian keyboard and it's hard to see myself typing in french on this thing ... It's good if you come from QWERTY, sure. But not if you come from AZERTY... it's really not.

I don't know if I'm the only one doing this but I switch to French only to use é, à, û, ç, ù, ... and that's it!
I'm so used to code in English that for any other character (ex: `, [, ], {, }, /, \, ...), I most use the English layout.

That's exactly what I mean, AZERTY is really useful is you're typing in french ! I would use anything else to type in french.

Though, yes, QWERTY, is the best to type in english. (I'd even say ISO-UK because ISO is always better )

I don't really have any reason to discuss since I don't know a lick of French and haven't ever even seen an AZERTY keyboard in person, but I've been lurking on this discussion and got curious.

I used data from here to graph how well the letter frequencies match up between the languages using only the primary 26 characters (this pretty much negates the significance of everything in this post, but hey, I compiled it so I may as well share it). It appears that for the most part, they're pretty similar.

frenchenglish2.PNG (41.47 KiB) Viewed 5716 times

So, looks like "h" (which is smack in the middle of both keyboards) is used 5.36% more English than French, and that's the maximum difference. All in all I'd say that typing them would be pretty similar, but of course I really have no authority to say this as an only-English typer.

Letter	Difference
h	5.36%
u	3.55%
w	2.29%
e	2.01%
y	1.85%
t	1.81%
o	1.71%
s	1.62%
l	1.43%
q	1.27%
f	1.16%
g	1.15%
v	0.86%
k	0.72%
r	0.71%
p	0.59%
b	0.59%
d	0.58%
i	0.56%
m	0.56%
a	0.53%
c	0.48%
j	0.46%
n	0.35%
x	0.28%
z	0.25%

That is to say...probably not a huge difference, but I can see how French could suck on QWERTY because English kinda sucks on QWERTY too...Dvorak or Colemak, anyone?

[davkol]

I used data from here to graph how well the letter frequencies match up between the languages using only the primary 26 characters (this pretty much negates the significance of everything in this post, but hey, I compiled it so I may as well share it). It appears that for the most part, they're pretty similar.

Touch typists don't strike individual keys in isolation though. When using multiple digits, the respective motions happen in parallel to a large extent; in fact, we should be looking at sequences of 5-8 keystrokes…

…obviously, n-gram frequencies differ significantly among languages, even bigrams. For example, consider 'th' and 'he' that are overrepresented in English corpora (way over 1.2 %), while in French, others are even more common, or in other kinds of languages nothing comes remotely close.