French AZERTY Layout
French AZERTY Layout is the most popular layout used for the French language in France, used by 99% of people in France, and is the worst design.
It is based on the AZERTY Layout
[see Alt Graph Key, Compose Key, Dead Key]
Note:
- The number row is Inverted. To type numbers, you have to press Shift key.
- Odd position of m
French AZERTY Layout is Bad
The French AZERTY Layout, is one of the most inefficient layout possible.
2017-07-19 Max P said:
Besides swapping A Q and placing the period on shift semicolon, the AZERTY layout is incredibly idiotic for at least its placement of accents:
(1) the letter ù is at QWERTY's apostrophe ' place, very convenient to hit. The problem is that this letter is used in only one word, “où” (meaning “where”), and nowhere else. At the same time, the most common accented letter é is at key 2. I think it's more common than many consonants, often there are several é's in one word (préférée, réélu etc.)
(2) But if you hit Shift+ù or Shift+é , you get % and 2, respectively, instead of uppercase letters. To type uppercase Ù, you have to press AltGraph+7 , then Shift+u . There is no way to type uppercase É.
(3) There's a dedicated dead circumflex ^ and diaeresis ¨ key to the right of p . This is a good design: circumflex can be paired with any vowel ( î ê ô û â ), yet is not very frequent; diaeresis is much less common and it's ok to put in on shifted key. Then they decided to add dead key with grave ` accent, doubling à è ù keys, and for whatever reason dead nasalization symbol the tilde ~, which is not used in French at all! But there is no dead acute accent ´ , used for the most common é letter.
Because of this design, many french people now think that uppercase letters are never written with diacritics, which is not right. That's sad.