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
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?
Moving to Belgium for a new job so…
Belgian AZERTY has the @ on a different key than the French one. No, don’t ask.
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
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!
AZERTY is not really about being similar to QWERTY. It’s the French standard keyboard layout.
Similarly QWERTZ is the German standard keyboard layout.Most (European?) countries use some variation of QWERTY with the symbols and special characters moved around to fit their respective languages better. Over here in the Netherlands we are a bit of an outlier in the sense that we use the US layout of QWERTY, but with additional modifier keys to make special characters available (It’s called US International)
There is also niche layouts like DVORAK (optimized layout for English) and BÉPO (optimized layout for French).
What is the reason you switched to AZERTY, if I may ask? I’m quite curious.
I’ve always wanted to use DVORAK but just don’t have the time to learn something so large and new (to me) at this stage of life. Gotta pick your battles.
Yeah, I remember being really interested in DVORAK when I was younger. But when it comes down to it, my typing speed is not really something that is holding back my productivity, so there is little benefit to be gained from switching.
Typing speed isn’t the only benefit to switching. Reduced finger and wrist movement have been a life saver for me
Yeah. If people stopped bugging me at work my productivity would 2x for sure.
Meanwhile my 110wpm on QWERTY is not exactly holding me back.
I use Dvorak on a 36 key Corne.
I started developing Ulnar Tunnel due to having really bad typing form from never learning the correct way to type. I was never going to unlearn the horrible (but fast) typing form that I had been using for years, so I decided to completely relearn how to type from the ground up using a different key layout on a completely different keyboard layout. It was a long and arduous process, but now my wrist pain is completely gone, and my typing speed has recovered.
Standard US Dvorak, but with the modification of using Caps Lock as Compose key so that I can type øæåØÆÅ when I need to.
I made the switch in 2011, but I nevwr bought into the typing-speed claim. Typing speed be damned, it’s just so much more comfortable this way.
Background:
I grew up with scandinavian keyboard layout in the 90s, but then two things happened almost at the same time:- I fucked up my msdos config, resulting in me having to use the default US layout
- I became interested in coding.
It didn’t take long to notice how much better US layout is once you need access to {, }, and @, so I became familiar with it. For a long time I swapped bac and forth depending on what I was doing. Then one day around the time when Walter White blew up Gustavo Fring it dawned on me out of the blue that qwerty was somewhat cumbersome, and I would most likely be using a keyboard recreationally and professionally for the rest of my life, so I might as well try to see if I could get used to something more comfortable.
Downside: Took me a while to get used to it. 6 months or so. A little more than that and my typing speed was up to what it used to be.
Upsides: More comfortable, Nobody wants to borrow my computer, and shoulder surfers have NFI what my password is based on what I’m typing.QWERTZ because I’ve been living my whole life in Austria and this was always the default. Every time something is set to QWERTY (and my keyboard is still physically QWERTZ), I have no idea where most of the special characters are and have to mash the keyboard in order to find them. I know @ is shift-2 and / is to the left of the right shift key, but most of the others, uh…
Settled on it after 2 years of Dvorak, 1 year of Colemak, and 1 month of Workman.
Though, I mainly use Plover stenography when I’m working, Norman for gaming, and Qwerty on mobile or as-needed (e.g. other people’s computers or while taking notes on my iPad for D&D)
I’ve been using Dvorak for maybe like 5 years now. There’s like a 2 or 3 day period whenever you’re learning a new keyboard layout in which you can’t type at all lmao. QWERTY or Dvorak or whatever. Just takes a bit for your brain to adjust.
The interesting thing is tho, if I sit down at a computer I don’t use every day and start typing, I can type QWERTY no problem, but if I ever have to type QWERTY on my personal computer (lookin at you RDP), its really hard.
I’ve been meaning to try out a Colemak layout, since it tries to keep a lot of the common computer shortcuts in the same place. (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V on Dvorak are in kind of an odd place and its a pain if you ever need to use them 1 handed, like if you’re holding a tablet pen)
How long did it take you to get back up to your old speed? It took me 1-3 mo. after switching. I think it helped that I used to look at the keys and when I converted I learned 100% touch typing.
about 1 month maybe to get back to full speed? I never really measured my typing speed before or right after switching so I don’t really know. I think nowadays i can type faster in Dvorak than I ever could in QWERTY, but thats probably just from using it a lot and generally needing to type more nowadays lol.
I went from 40-45wpm on Qwerty to 65-75wpm on Dvorak, but after I stopped practicing, I settled somewhere in the high 50s low 60s. I specifically measured because I wanted to be able to quantify the changes. Speed wasn’t my only concern, but it’s the biggest change. There’s no need to learn an alternative layout, but even people who don’t may benefit from a small adjustment like making caps lock a left backspace and learning to touch type. In retrospect, I would consider more of the alternative layouts before jumping to Dvorak, but I don’t regret it at all, even at work or with games.
I retrained myself in Dvorak many years back, and really enjoyed using it much better than QWERTY. I had to revert back to qwerty because of commercial standardizations/limitations at different workplaces, unfortunately.
All that to say that workman layout seems even better after reading that article. I don’t really see myself making the effort to switch again, but I enjoyed reading about it. Thanks for sharing.
Moved from AZERTY to QWERTY last year
Split Colemak on an Iris keyboard.
I don’t use it, but Slovak QWERTZ is the standard in my country. But using it feels like a pain in the ass (for me). Some characters need ctrl+alt rather than just shift, others may only be written with alt codes, at least on Windows…
Part of my graduation exam was literally to just type
\ % @ &on a computer. Thankfully for me, settings wasn’t blocked, so I just added US layout.If I need some slovak characters I do either one of the following:
- Say “fuck it” and write it without diacritics (“like SMS”)
- If needed in forms, use KCharSelect
- Smartphone virtual keyboard
- Like 1 but printed on paper with diacritics added using a pen
- Write it in English even if I am not supposed to and wait for the outcome
- Write it in English, pipe it to Google Translate (I find writing in English mostly easier anyway - doesn’t mean I am good at it)
- Write it in English, (attempt to) translate it myself
- Good ol’ pen 'n paper all the way (I mean, I’ve got a fountain pen too)
have you tried the eurokey layout? At least for German it has all the relevant characters easily reachable.
QWERTZ. Like QWERTY, but Y and Z exchanged, and some extra letters. Biggest difference to an English keyboard are the non alphabethical, non numerical characters. In comparison, they are all in different places.
AZERTY Belgian, Flemish style
For Chinese (10 key) and Japanese (kana)I use a 3x3 on my phone. Very common for Japanese but difficult to learn, maybe less common in Chinese over standard qwerty.
