French Keyboard Layout
There are 2 popular keyboard layouts for French language.
- French AZERTY layout, used in France.
- French Canadian layout, based on QWERTY layout, used in Quebec part of Canada.
French AZERTY Layout
〔►see Keyboard: 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
Canadian French Layout
The Canadian French layout is based on QWERTY layout.
Keyboard with French Layout
〔►see Apple Keyboards ⌨〕
Alternative French Layouts
There are a few ergonomic layouts for French.
Dvorak-fr layout
* 12345 67890 +%
_ =/-è\ ^(`)" []
:’ég. hvcmk z¨
oaueb fstnd w~
à ;q,iy xrlpj
Dvorak-fr is based on Dvorak.
〔►see Dvorak Keyboard Layout〕
Dvorak-fr has inverted number row.
Dvorak-fr appeared in 2002.
Dvorak-fr has 2 other variations. “Dvorak-fr-e” for entering all euro lang characters. “Dvorak-fr-k” for the Kinesis Contoured Keyboard.
〔►see Kinesis Advantage2 Keyboard Review〕
Dvorak-fr home page at http://www.algo.be/ergo/dvorak-fr.html
Bépo
Bépo is a ergonomic layout for French.
Bépo has inverted number row.
Bépo is a later invention than Dvorak-fr. It claims to improve some problems in Dvorak-fr, and is more well marketed.
Bépo home page at http://bepo.fr/
bvofrak
Bvofrak is ergonomic French layout. It's based on Dvorak-fr and Bépo.
It has several different versions for different keyboard.
There's even a version for English.
Bvofrak home page at http://bvofrak.blogspot.com/
French Letter Frequency and Keyboard Layout
French Letter Frequency and Keyboard Layout
How Do French People Type the Accents?
I asked a native French friend how French people type those accents. Here's his reply.
how do french people type those accents?
most people use AZERTY's accents on the first row: 2=é 7=è 9=ç 0=à for the rest there is "ù"key beside "m" and ¨e=ë ˆe=ê …
using dvorak on osx i use the associative chars [`´¨ˆˆ]+[aoeui] ; I'm not sure how to do it on windows/linux.
all the people i know．Engineers/scientists tend to stick with AZERTY，while some geeks/coders are using QWERTY/Maltron．some authors=BEPO
[from https://twitter.com/Ryuutei]
〔►see Maltron Keyboard Review〕
when in online chat, do people bother to type é è à etc properly? or do they just use e a?
Depends on the person but most of the time they type the accents, even when it's not really useful like: 'télé'(TV)
it seems awful to type all those accents. Is there some auto-add-accent in word processor or such?
I'm amazed how French are not annoyed by having to always go upthere. In word proccessors yes Auto-correct takes care of invariable accents.
〔►see International Keyboard Layouts〕
〔►see Alternative Keyboard Layouts〕