Great/Interesting Finds

[kbdfr]

I'd like to extract just a quote:

[…] At some point, compromises must be made, or not? […]

and suggest you apply this doubtless sound consideration to the AZERTY keyboard

[depletedvespene]

I'd like to extract just a quote:

[…] At some point, compromises must be made, or not? […]

and suggest you apply this doubtless sound consideration to the AZERTY keyboard

Yeah. The problem is that the compromises taken when designing the French national layout don't look like the right ones. IMNAAHO, YMMV, HAND; TUELADNMAAA.

[Myoth]

It's not a flawed design to think about everything that can exist. want a ý ? we got you covered.

Do not say that I'm lying. You use micron ? good for you. I use semi colon ? good for me. I'm sure there is much more people who use semi colon than micron.

We don't the period a lot, have you ever talked with Americans ? they use the period at the end of almost EVERY sentence, it really disturbs me. We never do, I could show you months and months of conversations without a single period "but then you'd contradict yourself because you said you had the time and as I can see there is only few words in every text" yeah because it doesn't feel good to type on a mobile phone.

You were lying about the period because the azerty layout made you lie about it.
To quote Burroughs : "The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client."
See how evil this layout is?

So you're saying I'm lying because AZERTY makes me lie ? a keyboard layout making me lie ? Maybe I shouldn't talk with you after hearing that one

[Myoth]

Now for the period ("full stop") being uppercase: as you end a sentence with a full stop and start the next sentence with an uppercase character, it seems logical that both would be uppercase. Of course it doesn't simplify typing when the initial capital of the sentence happens to be a character on the left side of the keyboard, but still it is perfectly logical (something the French consider an essential virtue, by the way).

What about the space between the full stop and the first letter of the next sentence?

You can shift through this one ...

I wonder you do not criticize the colon (:) being uppercase on most keyboards instead of lowercase like in the AZERTY keyboard.

Oh, if we had two more rows of keys we could get many more characters in the base layer. At some point, compromises must be made, or not?

Well yeah, why not use the most keys as possible to be as comfortable as possible with your way to type ? I don't think there is much more compromise to do here...

Except maybe that this is a good one, apparently :

[mecano]

You were lying about the period because the azerty layout made you lie about it.
To quote Burroughs : "The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client."
See how evil this layout is?

So you're saying I'm lying because AZERTY makes me lie ? a keyboard layout making me lie ? Maybe I shouldn't talk with you after hearing that one

No you should have stop to talk to me after this one :

Unless you are Flaubert, generations of us have been taught to make short sentences i.e. use period a lot.

Should have been “Unless you are Proust” of course

Yeah. The problem is that the compromises taken when designing the French national layout don't look like the right ones. IMNAAHO, YMMV, HAND; TUELADNMAAA.

By many aspects French Canadian layout got it better indeed.

Except maybe that this is a good one, apparently :
http://syndromedelasouris.info/wp-conte ... lavier.png

There is a site btw : https://bepo.fr
Yes bépo is great to type French, but mainly French only (there are adapted bépos though).
If you are french, use English a lot and normalized keyboard shortcuts in professional applications, you are better with a qwerty, colemak or workman layout with custom programmed unicode output keys for diacritics, cedilla and such.
Same thing if you code. There is even a layout optimized for Vim It all boils down to your computer use.
But do yourself a favour, drop azerty, it is really the worst thing on earth you could use.
Found one guy talking about his experience from azerty to bépo. He gives plenty of hints and has a clear and good flow. The only downside is that his taste for clothes is far from doing justice to « le chic français » : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-iBD1CfYwo

[IKSLM]

No Great/Interesting Finds on this page :O

[Myoth]

By many aspects French Canadian layout got it better indeed.

Are you really saying that this is better ?



That thing looks like worse, to be honest, why would you need the symbol on the P ? 1/4 ? there is no è ? there is no à ? ç ?

Surely this wasn't made because french canadians are trying to be "smart" or different from the others ...

[Techno Trousers]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't find it great or interesting to have a pointless layout debate in this thread. Can you guys take it elsewhere, please?

[IKSLM]

Agreed. Open a new thread and argue there.

[kbdfr]

Pointless layout debate? Pointless?

Spoiler:

Wars have been fought for less than keyboard layouts.
And, so I fear, will be.

[andrewjoy]

Pointless layout debate? Pointless?
Wars have been fought for less than keyboard layouts.
And, so I fear, will be.

[mecano]

Yup sorry for the noise, threaded here : off-topic-f10/the-azerty-argument-t17686.html

[davkol]

Honestly I have no idea why the A is there, but if it's here it certainly for a reason... though yeah could just be patriotism. "We NEED something different from the other peeps !!"

Unknown historical reasons, I bet they just wanted all vowels on same row, I even think they found it smart like in the typical french way "hey look we improved your layout, we fixed it, we put all vowels on the same row".

The same infrequency principle (i.e., separating symbols on the typebasket in order to prevent typebar jamming) that guided the design of QWERTY and the same reason as in the case of Y/Z swap on QWERTZ.

Of course, that was relevant prior to ~1900 and there was hardly any typewriter market in France at the time.

And on-topic: Zbrojovka Brno, typ 262.5

[mecano]

Honestly I have no idea why the A is there, but if it's here it certainly for a reason... though yeah could just be patriotism. "We NEED something different from the other peeps !!"

Unknown historical reasons, I bet they just wanted all vowels on same row, I even think they found it smart like in the typical french way "hey look we improved your layout, we fixed it, we put all vowels on the same row".

The same infrequency principle (i.e., separating symbols on the typebasket in order to prevent typebar jamming) that guided the design of QWERTY and the same reason as in the case of Y/Z swap on QWERTZ.

Of course, that was relevant prior to ~1900 and there was hardly any typewriter market in France at the time.

Curious to read your source about how A and Q row switching was motivated by key jamming.

[davkol]

Kay, Neil. Lock in, path dependence, and the internalization of QWERTY. 2013.

[seebart]

Hmm this entire thread went AZERTY-balistic in the last 24 hours...

[davkol]

Derailthority

[seebart]

Derailthority

See my signature...

[JP!]

3trt1y.jpg (15.11 KiB) Viewed 6964 times

[seebart]

c85bb449180fd671c625e324a2be6a6b--hate-mornings-morning-person.jpg (62.07 KiB) Viewed 6939 times

[JP!]

challenge.jpg (75.58 KiB) Viewed 6909 times

[mecano]

Kay, Neil. Lock in, path dependence, and the internalization of QWERTY. 2013.

Thanks davkol it was very informative, no practical historical explanation but lots of good hints.
Problem is the corpus for the azerty experiment is a Flaubert text who was notorious for hating linking words like “que” and “qui” which are more than often used in common writing (you can read a funny story about this involving Tourguéneff as reported by Zola here : https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Gustave_ ... e_Flaubert).
So the analysis for the Q position in azerty is built on quicksands unless the ones behind it made the same mistake.

Please continue here off-topic-f10/the-azerty-argument-t17686.html if you want to.

[davkol]

I don't see what it has to do with the respective bars (QWERTY "AZS") in the typebasket. It's a simple exercise to do the combinatorics on any other (contemporary) corpus.

The reasoning behind adoption of AZERTY in France is in the cited paper by Hölzl and Reinstaller (who cited Gardey): the French market was dominated by foreign behemoth manufacturers.

[mecano]

yes indeed (and it all started as a joke first) but this doesn't give an explanation for the A/Q switching, only suppositions.
Fact is we have no real explanation as why the guys who did that at the time did it, we only know it comes from the USA.
If you look at this map : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZERTY#/m ... pe_map.PNG
Azerty is surrounded by Qwert variations.
In 1907, 20 experts were commissioned and came up with ZHJAYSCPG but as DHIATENSOR in the US it will never take off (in Gardey as well).
Aren't you afraid of cats davkol? The one with the helmet is scaring the shit out of me.

[davkol]

but this doesn't give an explanation for the A/Q switching, only suppositions.

combinatorics

Fact is we have no real explanation as why the guys who did that at the time did it, we only know it comes from the USA.

Well, I most definitely do: (1) Sholes/Remington design and (2) market consolidation

If you look at this map : [layouts]
Azerty is surrounded by Qwert variations.

Only French speaking countries use a layout "optimized" for typing French.

Who would have guessed?

Aren't you afraid of cats davkol? The one with the helmet is scaring the shit out of me.

Why would I? I don't particularly like cats, but that's a different story.

[Cavemanthe0ne]

A full Zenith system with an XT Zenith keyboard
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Zenith-Data-Sy ... Swfi9ZuEdw

[Elrick]

A full Zenith system with an XT Zenith keyboard
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Zenith-Data-Sy ... Swfi9ZuEdw

Nice to see we have that much sought after Black, White/Silver and Gold coloured keyboard badge, that many here on DT are lusting after.

Maybe someone here will buy that outfit just for that illustrious badge .

[JP!]

Since Azerty has been a popular discussion point I figured I would pass this along.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-5251-FONCT ... Ciid%253A3

[hansichen]

And there is another one listed by the seller, you don't see these PCs too often
https://ebay.com/itm/122806860105

[seebart]

Since Azerty has been a popular discussion point I figured I would pass this along.

Haha that's the first AZERTY Beamspring I've seen and of course it's a 5251...