France is Getting a New Keyboard (2019)

gizmodo.com

2 pointsdrilldrive3 comments

If you want to try out this keyboard yourself, check out this pilot layout[0] as well as the government website on the new keyboard[1].

[0] https://github.com/springcomp/optimized-azerty-win

[1] https://norme-azerty.fr/

Thanks, https://norme-azerty.fr/#explore allows you to compare old vs new and see the actual differences.

Looks like the "normal" letters stayed all in the same place but symbols and special letters have been moved around. Especially having ( and ) next to each other will probably make a few people happy.

I don't speak French at all yet, but looking at this keyboard, I like most all the design choices over the standard QWERTY keyboard and especially over the old AZERTY French keyboard. For English use it is quite nice except I do like the ' and " keys close to the center, and as a general rule I think switching the 6 bracket keys ()[]{} over two keys to the right would be nicer for programming use to avoid needing to over-extend the pointer-finger (Put ù and Ù on the 5 key anyways, to match with the other accented vowels). I really like the extra basic maths keys as well, since too often there is no LaTeX or Markdown widget in websites.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com