I did not realize this was a thing until I just switched to AZERTY which… despite being marketed as being “similar” to QWERTY, is still tripping me up

Edit: since this came up twice: I’m switching since I’m relocating to the French-speaking part of the world & I just happened to want to learn the language/culture, so yeah

      • mac@lemm.ee
        2·
        14 hours ago

        Lol yeah the spacebar is so much wasted real estate. Thats why ergo mech keyboards map it to a thumb cluster.

    • Pirata@lemm.ee
      8·
      2 days ago

      I think this makes sense for people who type only in English. If you type in other languages, this becomes way less relevant.

      Not to mention the limitations in hardware.

      • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
        2·
        2 days ago

        I type in English, Portuguese and Spanish (mainly in English because code, then Portuguese because I live in Brazil) and I use Dvorak. I don’t use accents or other special characters, but because I’m a “gringo” I get a pass.

      • mac@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 day ago

        Yeah no definitely. This is a heatmap generated off of English words.

        However Germanic/latin languages may be similar

    • Kissaki@feddit.orgEnglish
      4·
      20 hours ago

      How difficult was it to learn and switch?

      When I considered I ultimately didn’t commit to practice - because it’s so different and seemed like not worth the effort.

      How do see the impact it has? It is considerably more comfortable or efficient?

  • bipedalsheep@programming.dev
    3·
    1 day ago

    I switched to Colemak-dh about 2 year ago when I bought a ZSA Moonlander after getting a terrible case of rsi in my left wrist. When I type on other keyboards (which I try to avoid whenever possible) I still use qwerty. Curious thing, I write at about 70 wpm with 99% accuracy with colemak-dh on my Moonlander but I can’t pass 10 wps when using colemak-dh on other keyboards, and I have no hope in hell writing with qwerty on the Moonlander at all. The motor memory is completely decoupled between the split keyboard and the non-split keyboard. Which I guess is good, since then when using someone else’s keyboard I won’t have issues using their keyboard.

    • DrownedRats@lemmy.world
      3·
      23 hours ago

      What you just described is pretty much exactly my experience with colemak and split keebs too.

      When i was learning colemak i decided to take the time to teach myself proper touch typing at the same time. Now i can only touch type colemak on a split ortho. I cant type qwerty at all on it.

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    6·
    2 days ago

    I use Colemak, but just learned about Colemak-DH in this thread, I might give that a try, as the hjkl keys seem to be better positioned and have been trying to get back to vim.

  • heavydust@sh.itjust.works
    11·
    2 days ago

    I’m French but I’m a programmer. I fully switched to standard Colemak in 6 months. There was no difference between QWERTY and AZERTY to me and I had pain in my wrists. Colemak removed that pain in a few weeks and I still get to keep the standard shortcuts (Ctrl+C/V…) because some keys stay in the same place. It’s annoying sometimes when you’re learning but it’s definitely worth it.

  • PonyOfWar@pawb.social
    39·
    2 days ago

    QWERTZ, which is just the standard layout for Germany. It switches out Y and Z, adds Umlauts and changes the positions of various special characters.

    I’m curious, what made you switch to AZERTY?

        • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
          1·
          16 hours ago

          There are two methods:

          • You can use caps lock for the capitalized umlauts and caps lock and shift for the capitalized French accented vowels
          • You can use the accent buttons and combine with a normal capitalized vowel. For example, the button between ü and enter is the two dots button ¨, so you press two dots, then shift-o and get a capital Ö. Same for the French accented vowels the two buttons on the left of backspace have ´ and ` (with alt-gr and shift respectively) and you can combine those with shift-e for É È.

          The second method sounds convoluted, but you get used to combining keys anyway. For example for the circumflex ^ because â ê î ô û don’t exist pre-combined on this keyboard layout. The same goes for some rarer combinations like ï, which despite the dots isn’t a German umlaut, it’s an i with trema for use in French for example in haïr, to hate.

          German only really introduced capitalized umlauts for printing around 1900, so people used to use the combinations of the vowel with e for capitalized umlauts in print. Then the first mechanical typewriters again didn’t all have umlauts, or sometimes had only small umlauts. The combinations with e is also used for systems that have technical limitations. If they are ASCII based for example. Therefore even today people are somewhat used to it, so if you were to write Oeffnungszeit instead of Öffnungszeit nobody would bat an eye.

          • Ziglin (it/they)@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            11 hours ago

            Caps lock is a key I never want to touch but dead keys (for combining characters) are what one uses for accents (but not umlaute) in the German QWERTZ too.

      • ReallyZen@lemmy.ml
        12·
        2 days ago

        Belgian AZERTY has the @ on a different key than the French one. No, don’t ask.

        • zlatiah@lemmy.worldOP
          4·
          2 days ago

          Yup… I had a suspicion that the Belgian system will somehow be different, so thankfully I didn’t find this out the hard way. I could have almost bricked my laptop login password that way…

          Also it’s the first time I had to use my right hand to type the Alt key which is so trippy

          • ReallyZen@lemmy.ml
            3·
            2 days ago

            Well, when you aren’t shackled to your new keyboard, be sure to enjoy our beers, french fries and chocolates, they are truly unmatched anywhere!