New French keyboard standard

[madrobby]

Fascinating stuff https://www.aalto.fi/news/changing-how-a-country-types

[Myoth]

but what's the layout ?

[Findecanor]

The official site uses something which isn't supported by my Chromium browser, so I can't see what the hell it is there..

But I found this in their press release:


They also changed the Bépo layout:

[depletedvespene]

What a terribly designed keyboard layout.

On the other hand, they seem to have copied some of my stuff (the good bits, mind you).

[depletedvespene]

And, unbelievably, the Greek alphabet layer is INCOMPLETE - it's missing the last SIX letters: τ, υ, φ, χ, ψ ω. Is this a belated April Fools' joke or what?

[Findecanor]

My notes:
• Accented A's have been moved together. They were previously all over the place.
• Parentheses, brackets and braces are on opposite sides of a split keyboard: same finger but different hand ... (except for, as all of us know, a large number of "ergo" keyboards that split the numeric row between the wrong keys.)
• Currencies are on Alt Gr + Letter, E:Euro, D:Dollar, which makes sense.
• French «quotation marks» are (finally) given first-class status: they are the French norm but have been difficult to find on previous Azerty keyboards.

I think it is a wasted opportunity not to have µ on Alt Gr+M as it is on German layout and many others.
I do applaud them for giving × a good place: on Alt Gr + * as (it should be).
(I tend to get annoyed when I see people using lower-case U instead of µ and lower-case X instead of × )

[depletedvespene]

The more I look at this, the more things I find to dislike, EVEN if we give this thing a pass on the location of the main letters of the alphabet (A-Z) and the numbers remaining on the Shift layer:

• The Greek layer is obviously incomplete: it is missing SIX letters (out of 24½).
• The currency layer is not well designed - currency symbols should NOT depend on wether Shift is pressed - that WILL be an annoyance.
• Currency symbols on the AltGr layer (after already having pressed AltGr-F) will be uncomfortable to reach.
• Important currency symbols are missing, but the Austral symbol (₳) is present. Nope. Get rid of that one.
• Mainly, letters will be in base/Shift pairs or AltGr/AltGr-Shift combinations for lower and upper case forms (a/a, ç/Ç, …), except a few that are assigned base/AltGr combinations (à/À, ê/Ê, …). This is NOT intuitive and WILL be the source of errors. Also, how will these combinations behave when CAPS LOCK is on?
• Parentheses, braces, brackets... oh, dear.
• Little to no consistency in the placement of the diacritic dead keys.
• What is greek letter θ doing in the AltGr layer of the base layout?
• The placement of the | character stinks. Also, no non-combining ~ (tilde) and ` (backquote) characters anywhere. Good luck, Unix users!
•  No consistency in the assignment of the "caractères européens" dead key - while it's understandable that ß/ẞ gets promoted to the base layout, there is no apparent reason for adding ezh (ʒ/Ʒ) as well, and under W instead of Z. Perhaps that was the Z key in an early draft? Where IS the eñe letter? (the combining AltGr-N+N combo will be uncomfortable enough for AltGr-F+N to be preferable).
• It SEEMS but it's not unequivocal that the key to the right of P has the following characters: hyphen-minus, underscore, em dash and ¿¿en dash?? (looks like a second hyphen-minus). But how does combine with the characters under the key 8?

EW.


I can't help but keep wondering: is this a belated April Fools' joke or what?

[Findecanor]

Also, no non-combining ~ (tilde) and ` (backquote) characters anywhere. Good luck, Unix users!

That's standard for several languages, unfortunately. Including Swedish.

[depletedvespene]

Also, no non-combining ~ (tilde) and ` (backquote) characters anywhere. Good luck, Unix users!

That's standard for several languages, unfortunately. Including Swedish.

True, but several layouts HAVE been revised to correct such omissions - for example, the Spanish (Spain) layout originally did not have the combining tilde dead key, but was added later, in 1998. And nowadays, in 2019, it's not excusable to keep making the same omissions, even more so if some other characters are "finally" being added (like the angular quotes).

Damn, they should pay me for this.

[kbdfr]

Somehow this thread reminds me of depletedvespene's thread
"A proposal for a new, (hopefully) better French national layout"
where he (as the discussion showed) very correctly started with the following statement:

First, a disclaimer: I am not French and I don't know anything about anything. Now, with that out of the way... […]

and where for example he simply denied that in French "à" is a full-fledged letter and not simply a "a with a diacritic".

This being said, here's the site where you can find a functioning interactive simultaneous display of both the new and the old AZERTY layouts:
http://norme-azerty.fr/
It also gives access to the different characters which can be obtained after pressing respectively:
- AltGr+F, i.e. "¤" ("monetary mode")
- AltGr+G, i.e. "µ" ("Greek character mode") or
- Alt+H, i.e. "Eu" ("Eu character mode")
So basically you have 3 additional layers.

Of course it is easy (especially without a clue) to find the new French layout disastrous,
but for the vast majority of those who will actually use it (they at least speak and type French)
it has a wealth of improvements, especially direct access to accented capitals and the French quotation marks.

There's one aspect, by the way, which I think has not been mentioned here yet,
it is to be found in the FAQ of the page of the French standardization organisation AFNOR dealing with the new keyboard::
https://normalisation.afnor.org/actuali ... bligatoire
and reads:

7. Cette norme est-elle obligatoire ?
La norme sur le clavier français, comme 99% des normes d’origine volontaire, n’est absolument pas obligatoire. Elle n’oblige personne à quoi que ce soit. C’est un document d’application volontaire. Les fabricants de claviers peuvent décider de s’y conformer pour produire des nouveaux modèles de claviers si ce marché représente un intérêt pour leur développement. Les entreprises et les administrations peuvent néanmoins décider d’équiper leurs salariés ou leurs agents de claviers optimisés et donc faire de ce document une condition pour répondre à un appel d’offres.

Spoiler:

If you heavily criticize the new layout without any prospect of ever having to use it, you will at least be proficient enough in French to at least read that, I think
For those who simply read this thread, it says that the new norm is not mandatory.

[Wintermute1974]

Here is the DeepL translation of the explanatory paragraphs of kbdfr's link:

A standard for the French keyboard
The project was launched at the end of 2015 on a proposal from the Délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France (Ministry of Culture), based on the observation that current "AZERTY" keyboard models constrain the writing of French, regional languages and European languages in the Latin alphabet.

For the first time, a standard (NF Z71-300) defines the placement of characters on the French keyboard. It has two layouts, one of which closely follows the AZERTY keyboard used by most people who write in French. However, in many ways it is superior to the old keyboard:

• it contains all the characters required to enter text in French (for example, É, œ and")
• it is designed to be more ergonomic and allow faster entry
• it includes almost 60 additional characters for entering foreign languages, technical content, etc.
• however, characters remain easy to locate thanks to intuitive groupings

The new AZERTY layout was developed using computer algorithms. These are based on the results of the most recent research in text input, a large amount of French text data (from newspapers to programming code via Twitter), and large-scale studies of keyboard typing speed.

[Myoth]

The official site uses something which isn't supported by my Chromium browser, so I can't see what the hell it is there..

But I found this in their press release:


They also changed the Bépo layout:

Interesting, I'll have to get a board with these to have the full experience. It looks very neat and useful. Can't wait

[depletedvespene]

Somehow this thread reminds me of depletedvespene's thread
"A proposal for a new, (hopefully) better French national layout"
where he (as the discussion showed) very correctly started with the following statement:

First, a disclaimer: I am not French and I don't know anything about anything. Now, with that out of the way... […]

and where for example he simply denied that in French "à" is a full-fledged letter and not simply a "a with a diacritic".

Who is more clueless, the guy who makes a jokeful disclaimer or the one who uses it unironically as a carte blanche to deny without further argument all of the other one's propositions? Sorry, kbdfr, but (almost) your entire response to my comments come off as spiteful and dumb and do not deserve an answer... with the one exception.

For those who simply read this thread, it says that the new norm is not mandatory.[/spoiler]

Yes, I noticed that. And it is a GOOD thing that this new layout is not mandatory, because it being voluntary does not negate the fact that it is full of problems and inexcusable omissions. Or is that, somehow, my ignorance has made me not realize that French people actually do not use 25% of the Greek alphabet whenever actually writing in Greek? (etc.)

Don't bother.

[kbdfr]

Obviously the difference between depletedvespene and me is that he doesn't speak French while I have been typing French texts on an AZERTY keyboard on a daily basis for, hem, decades.
This, of course, does not mean that all his critics are to be dismissed, but some appear simply dumb when looked at more thoroughly.

[…]
Currency symbols on the AltGr layer (after already having pressed AltGr-F) will be uncomfortable to reach.

Of course most of them are rather uncomfortable to reach as you have to first type the AltGr+F combo (not the AltGr-F sequence) and then the key corresponding to the desired currency, but it’s not like the average French keyboard user is going to need them all the time. But for those the most likely to be needed (obviously €, $ and £), you simply press AltGr together with their key - this has always been standard for € (AltGr+E) and now for £ the old Shift+$ combo has been replaced with AltGr+Z which admittedly seems to be a weird choice, and for $ the previous $ key which has little justification as a dedicated key on a French keyboard has been replaced with the logical AltGr+D.

Important currency symbols are missing, but the Austral symbol (₳) is present. Nope. Get rid of that one.

While I have to agree that the ₳ seems to be a real blunder as the Austral (which like probably most Frenchies I had never heard about before I looked up Wikipedia just a few minutes ago) was the currency of Argentina between 1985 and 1991, I don't quite see which "important" currency symbols are missing. I must admit I don't even know most of those which are present - and by the way, how do you access them at all on another standard national layout?

Mainly, letters will be in base/Shift pairs or AltGr/AltGr-Shift combinations for lower and upper case forms (a/a, ç/Ç, …), except a few that are assigned base/AltGr combinations (à/À, ê/Ê, …). This is NOT intuitive and WILL be the source of errors.

There is consistency here. Non-accented letters are of course base/Shift, their rarer counterparts (like æ or œ ) are on the corresponding key as AltGr/ShiftAltGr. On the other hand, the heavily used accented letters like é, ê, à and è are still on the number row (remember, on French AZERTY boards the numbers on the number row have always been and remain uppercase, i.e. Shift. Obviously the decision was to keep the numbers, which are by far more frequent than the accented capitals É, Ê and the like, directly accessible with Shift while the accented capitals are AltGr+the key. This affects only the number row, and does it in a consistent way.

Parentheses, braces, brackets... oh, dear.

Let’s stop here after such a convincing argument…



The new AZERTY layout brings a wealth of characters you wouldn’t even dare to dream of in other national layouts.
But of course, criticizing is easier than carefully checking which improvements have been made.

This being said, there are a few thinks I’m not very happy with in the new layout, but it contains a lot of new ideas and approaches which I do expect will trigger and/or influence serious considerations for other national layouts.

[abrahamstechnology]

Looks like some wierd old terminal layout.

[daedalus]

Obviously the decision was to keep the numbers, which are by far more frequent than the accented capitals É, Ê and the like, directly accessible with Shift while the accented capitals are AltGr+the key. This affects only the number row, and does it in a consistent way.

Agreed, but it seems like there are some not particularly important characters on the home row around the Return key - they could have moved some of those to the shifted position on the number row and put numbers in the unshifted position.

I concede that it's hard to argue with 100+ of muscle memory in the French speaking world, but it also seems like an objectively inefficient idea to require the user to hold shift to type a number.

[joedon]

Interesting but the keyboard layout needs improvement.