People who use non-QWERTY keyboards: what do you use?
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
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.
Over here in the Netherlands we are a bit of an outlier in the sense that we use the US layout of QWERTY
Tell that to Microsoft! I remember people using Windows would complain their : turned into ± etc., actually I haven't heard that in a while now, did they finally fix that or just change the layout switching hotkey to something one doesn't accidentally press?
I think that finally got fixed several years ago. I do remember this exact problem though..
By default both the Dutch and US International layouts would be enabled if you set up the computer to the Dutch region. And you could switch between them (accidentally) by pressing some key combination. It was highly annoying..
What is the reason you switched to AZERTY
Not OP but I would guess he wants full immersion in a new country with a new language. That's still not a good idea IMHO. AZERTY is no different than QWERTY (except for a few keys) because you still move and distord your fingers all over the place whether you use one language or the other. I switched to the full "Colemak on US ISO keyboard" and my fingers have no problem writing in French too.
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 used Dvorak for a couple months but every time I sat down I had to force myself not to revert to muscle memory. Also, at the time at least, I had to remap they keys in every game I played so they were spread all around the keyboard. Just wasn't with it.
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.
This Heatmap is why I made the switch to colmak-dh.
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.
French has the bépo layout which applies the Dvorak methodology to French
I type in other languages as well on Colemak dh, it's still way better
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.
Yeah no definitely. This is a heatmap generated off of English words.
However Germanic/latin languages may be similar
I think I will bind E to my spacebar.
Lol yeah the spacebar is so much wasted real estate. Thats why ergo mech keyboards map it to a thumb cluster.
Swedish. Of course, these all lack three letters. And I don't think this tool counts special characters?
I actually can't type in QWERTY anymore.
QWERTZ like any German. 🤷
I thought German would be QUARZ. /s
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.
Dvorak for more than 30 years, because at the time, it was the only reasonable alternative.
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.
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 never 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:
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...
Colemak-DH on a Corne (42, chocs).
Hello !ergomechkeyboards@lemmy.world :)
Been eyeing graphite though. Might make the switch over the summer when there is less workload.
Are you aware of !mechanical_keyboards@programming.dev as well?
Hah, I didn't have that particular one in my subscription list actually. Just a bunch of other ones.
Same here, Colemak-DH is dope
I was on the same layout but both my cornes died recently. I miss it :(
I use QWERTZ the Swiss version. (It's not optimal as it has to accomodate 3 languages)
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.
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.
I retrained myself in Dvorak many years back […]
It's been a while since I've tried Dvorak, so I'm not very confident in my memory, but, iirc, I rememeber Dvorak causing some discomfort in my wrists. Not as bad as QWERTY, mind you, but I found that Workman was much more comfortable for me. Plus, I found that the general proximity of Workman to QWERTY, when compared with the proximity of Dvorak to QWERTY, made it much more convenient to use. For example, on Workman, copy and paste (ie Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V) are each just moved over one key to the right [1], whereas Dvorak puts them on the opposite end of the keyboard [2], that is, when comparing them with QWERTY [3].
Small warning about workman. It has issues with lateral movements and single finger n-grams. “ly” and “ct” being notable examples.
A piece of advice I heard that served me well was to look mostly at post covid designs. A lot of work was done on layout optimization around that time and the results show.
My recommendations in no particular order are:
Colemak-DH if you want to focus on a well supported layout.
Graphite or Engram or one of the hands down layouts are modern well optimized layouts I would consider if I was to learn something today.
Some people like MTGAP but in my book it was designed with too much of an emphasis on minimizing key spacing without a strong enough emphasis on how human hands work.
I personally use engram but it only works for me because I have strong pinkies. If you don’t it’s probably a bad choice.
Dvorak for over 25 years.
Dvorak with caps lock as a dead key here. No programmer's Dvorak despite being a programmer... Never quite made the leap
AZERTY Belgian, Flemish style
Engram. It’s a great layout that focuses on pinky in rolls.
It’s a steep layout to learn even compared to thing like Colemak but I find it quite satisfying.
It's technically a QWERTY-variant, but I use EurKey
Are you on !mechanical_keyboards@programming.dev already?
Thought I was. Must've been a couple of duplicate comms on other instances.
😱 How can someone use this?
Layers, it's much easier than you might think if you're already touch typing.
What do all these interesting pictogram keys do?
The ringed planet is escape, the crescent is tab, the five-pointed stars are ctrl, the eye is super, and the sparkles are backspace.
QWERTZ with Slovene/Croatian letters
Programmer dvorak
I also taught myself Colemak and Workman, but I prefer Dvorak
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?
Colemak. Fingers move around less than QWERTY.
QWERTZ
I am moving from AZERTY to bépo with futo keyboard but i want to try ergo-l
I've been slowly, and I mean slowly, trying to pick up steno. I get the occasional moment where I go super quick, but mostly it's just 1-10wpm at the moment. When I actually want to get stuff done I switch to QWERTY
Split Colemak on an Iris keyboard.
Moved from AZERTY to QWERTY last year
I have a fully custom keyboard layout on my split ergo keyboard, makes it really hard to work on somebody else's machine!
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.
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.
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:
have you tried the eurokey layout? At least for German it has all the relevant characters easily reachable.
I use EurKey, it's neat when you occasionally need special umlauts. https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/
Version 1.3
-----------
Added ✓ and ✗ (replacing © and №)
Added capital ß (ẞ)
:O
Yep I switched from quertz to this because the symbols used in coding are Ansi QWERTY derived. Can still write German and get brackets on layer 0 best of both worlds.
Ortholinear Dvorak.
i've used dvorak but I plan to switch to a charachorder
QWERTZ
German spotted hehehe.
Croatian actually :D
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.
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.
Now I'm wondering if other typing layouts are better or worse for people who use swype, swiftkey etc. Maybe those need character separation to function best?
Correct.
Non-qwerty trips me up too x3.. I considered using ąžerty before cause certain symbols can be annoying with qwerty in my language, since you need to hit 3 buttons
Dvorak. My fourth year of college I found myself with some time and decided to finally learn to touch-type. No regrets, I love it.
Not quite the same thing, but I really don't like the ISO (International, what a lot of European use) QWERTY layout compared to the US one. It's not unusable or anything, but...
I wish that ISO would make some new layout that starts from the layout from US ANSI and then stuffs the European-specific symbols somewhere on the keyboard.
And while I'm dreaming, I'd like that layout to physically swap left control and Caps Lock, so that I don't have to go swapping it in software everywhere.
And to get rid of Menu and Right Windows and replace it with Compose which is, I think, by far the most-preferable way to get access to a substantial additional number of characters. AltGr or Option permits for a small number of additional characters and is harder to remember for occasional use. The Windows Alt-numpad scheme is also much harder to remember, as is the GTK Control-shift-u
<Unicode hex codepoint>
convention.I also don't use right Control, but I can believe that somewhere out there, someone gets actual use out of it and needs it somewhere comfortable, so I won't complain about that.
Actually, what I really want, which would solve the above in an even better fashion, is for laptops to use modular, standardized, replaceable keyboards so that I can just buy whatever keyboard I want and slap it on the thing. With external keyboards, as on desktops, the selection is much better.
EDIT: I'd also add that I've seen numerous European users saying that they also prefer the US ANSI layout over the ISO layout, so it's not just me being US-centric, and OP has a comment even saying so themselves in this thread. But if you just use stock US ANSI, then you don't directly get access to the extended Latin set, which you want in Europe. Though Compose can do that, and OP is, like me, also wanting Compose on his keyboard...
ISO-QWERTZ is a thing. Same for other flavors of the ISO european style.
There's a variant of AZERTY devised by the AFNOR ( french standardisation agency) that improves on a lot of ways on the legacy AZERTY, by grouping accents, parentheses, quote marks, etc. and making keys combinations a lot less common. It would be quite easier to learn than standard AZERTY, and it's quite easy to learn for regular AZERTY users too. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to find a keyboard or even keycaps with the corresponding markings. Drivers are available by following the link if you want to try it for yourself.
It looks like this :
As for myself, I touch type in French on a QWERTY keyboard with an AZERTY letters layout, because even legacy AZERTY keycaps are not that common, and neither are ISO enthusiast segment keyboards.
LDLC (online shop) has those new keyboards, but I don't know if its worth it since the problem with all the standard layouts are the location of the letters in the first place.
They used to but it's not for sale anymore. It was a really cheap membrane keyboard anyway, so not something I would want to use. I'm actually fine with the location of the letters, it's the illogical distribution of parentheses, slashes, quotation marks, square brackets etc. that I find irritating in AZERTY. I wouldn't want to relearn it from scratch, I just wish I could get my hands on some quality new AZERTY keycaps.
Some cursed variant of dvorak with both common programming symbols and the local extra letters on accessible keys.
I switched because I got tired of the {}[] being on alt+gr combinations on the Nordic qwerty
Qwertz.
I teu tried neo couple of years ago but did not use it long enough to get proficient.
Plover. I'm still not any good at it.
I know that feeling.
I use "US International with AltGr dead keys". I'm most used to the US layout, and I need to type in other languages, so this layout works perfectly. I've gotten used to it enough that I just use this layout on every keyboard regardless of what the keyboards say on their keys. The hardest was probably using this layout on on an AZERTY keyboard, I'd often forget where keys were, but it worked well enough.
Since I'm German I used to exclusively use qwertz, but now I use both qwertz and qwerty with qwerty being my main when docked.
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.
Also QWERTZ, but the Swiss version that has these guys on the umlauts with shift äöü -> àéè
What do you do when you want them capitalized?
It is so similar to QUERTY, that I just shrugged when I accidentally ordered the wrong 15 euro keyboard. So technically I also use QUERTZ, but I still tell my PC it is a QUERTY keyboard. Fun times when someone attempts to use my PC and gets confused.