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
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.