Hi, I'm sure a lot of you are only used to US Qwerty.
You probably found a lot of things that annoy you in the Qwerty layout.
Here is something to help you appreciate or at least put in perspective your situation.
So lets start with a
Main part of Azerty-FR ISO-105 PC kb 1) In pink keys with characters that I rarely use, that are in very easy access positions :
PS if you use them often in code or France please tell me in what context.
² : in a word processing program you would use something else, if you can't well better hope you don't need other values or positions.
$ : I know € didn't exist at the time, but I doubt imports needed to be typed in dollars that bad.
ù : It is used in only one french word : "où", I agree it is common as it means "where", but still !
Shift position :
blank : there is nothing in shifted ², really no idea what to put there ? I don't know, maybe a ³.
£ : same comment as $
µ : most people that I worked with in biology, as that was my major for 5 years in college, don't even know they can get that key for writing 1/1 000 000 of a meter (µm). Those that do, are afraid of compatibility issues. They would writer u instead !
§ : I think it has something to do with paragraphs... what ever.
2) In blue characters that I use a lot and aren't in main position:
Shifted position :
? : I'm surprised that this wasn't favored over other characters!
. : I know French makes longer sentences but still, they have to end at some point.
/ : The standard separator for dates... and now used in web context.
+ : I'd say it is more used than =, but I may be wrong.
Alt Gr position :
\ : The path separator in dos... maybe not relevant at the time, I don't know.
@ : Okay before we didn't have emails, but it still annoys me now.
3) In yellow things that are far apart or hard to remember which is shifted
( and ) : 5 keys between them, not even symmetric fingers, same for [] and worse for {}.
- and _ : people invert them a lot, maybe if they were on the same key they would think more when seeing the key.
< and > : When in a hurry I type >< instead of <>, gets on my nerves.
4) In orange things that seem randomly positioned
é, è and e : not close to each other, maybe the point was to have them slightly off ?
same thing about ç, à and ù.
exchanging some letters : a-q, z-w, m under p... I'd say change none or all but just a few seems random.
5) Just to make things a bit more complete things I think are better in Azerty than on a Qwerty US ANSI-104 board, apart from having access to éèçà^¨ of course.
Main part of Qwerty-US ANSI-104 PC kb! and ? are too far apart.
( and ) are in shifted position, could have been swapped with [ ] and {}.
I prefer the vertical shape of the enter key over the long one, and the \| is over sized for what is on it.
< and > are in positions where more useful things could have been in.
