[Mikeb85]

> Good luck typing "La leçon du père noël à l'école de la forêt" with something else than my french keyboard.

There's key bindings for a regular qwerty keyboard that lets you compose letters and symbols to make accents. It's very easy to write French (with all the accents) on a US keyboard (on Gnome Intl. Alt keyboard with dead keys I believe).

[WinstonSmith84]

French here. I've an American keyboard, not only because my company language is english, but especially because writing code on a US layout is from far the best. [], {}, () can be typed directly or by pressing shift. On a French keyboard, you've the additional Alt-GR key which must be used (second Alt key), which makes some keys awkward to type efficiently - if you've a MacBook, the Alt-Gr key doesn't event exist, which makes writing code a nightmare ([ and { just don't exist!!).

Then, numbers which are very common to type when writing code must be typed by pressing shift. A French keyboard is made to write French efficiently, arguably English too, but definitely not to write code.

[TeeMassive]

Québecois here, for me I have to switch between English and French all the time and pressing Alt do ~{}[] and Shift for <>()| has become a second nature. I just don't think about it anymore and I have to say that when I have to use a US keyboard I just feel so limited.

[hyakosm]

The problem with US keyboard is that it's most of the time an ANSI layout, with a missing key between Z and left-shift. I love the CSA keyboard because letters with accents are in direct access (a lot better than French Azerty) and {}[]() are positioned logically.

[makapuf]

I very much long for a French keyboard designed for coding ...

[randomswede]

A French equivalent of the "Polish Hacking keyboard"? Never used it (not even remotely Polish), but I know several people who speak well of it.

[hyakosm]

I had a computer with an US ANSI keyboard a few years and I don't remember it to be very easy. It's annoying to compose accents, it's worse when you have to switch to another OS or another computer. On Windows, it's a mess when you have more than one keyboard layout activated. And it's terrible when you have to type « » or æ œ like : « J'ai mangé des œufs pour Noël »

[willyt]

I just set the input language to French and let autocorrect add the accents, 99% of the time, it gets it right as there are not that many words where the accents change a word into a completely different word. The only one I can think of is marche as in walking vs marché as in a market.

[BiteCode_dev]

Easy doesn't mean productive. My guess is that you take 2 to 3 times longer to time such sentence.

[Mikeb85]

Versus using an azerty keyboard or another French-specific layout? Yeah, it's a tad slower. But it's a hell of a lot quicker than trying to look up/remember alt-codes or something. Writing in 2 languages with one keyboard is never going to be optimal.

And 2-3 times longer? Most sentences in French don't have that many accents, the example picked was a rare one.

[BiteCode_dev]

Yes but we are talking about putting them in code symbols in the first place.

[xcambar]

French here using US keyboard with Compose key. Works like a charm.