One thing I hate about US keyboards is that they don't let me type my French special characters by any memorable strecth -- what's the dead key for the cedilla again? (ç)

One thing I hate about French keytboards is that they have all the punctuation keys messed up... which is particularily painful when trying to write code. < and > share a single key! [ and ] require THREE fingers! (you'd better give un on using arrays!! :p)

The only bearable solution in the long run is to remap the keys to an order that makes a little more sense.

I just found the perfect tool for create new keyboard layouts on the mac: Ukelele ! :)

Ukele easily lets you reassign characters to keys with any hot key combination and it also lets you create dead keys (multiple keypress sequences to create one character).

Now one question remains: which keyboard should I start with: a French AZERTY or a US QWERTY keyboard? (All mac keyboard layouts here)

By the way: if you're looking for a keymap editor for Windows, here's one from Microsoft.


Comments from long ago:

Comment from: Mox Folder

or the French QWERTY ;)

Fait toi importer un clavier canadien français, tu as le meilleur des deux mondes comme ça.

2009-06-19 19-35

Comment from: François Planque

Je viens de regarder sur Wikipedia. Apparemment le clavier Canadien n’est pas vraiment meilleur que le Français, si ce n’est qu’il est Qwerty. Mais les < > [] et {} sont pareillement mal placés (par rapport au QWERTY américain bien sur)

2009-06-19 23-01

Comment from: Johnix

Now one question remains: which keyboard should I start with?

Dvorak… why should you ask?

2011-10-13 09-54

Comment from: Östervall

opt+c gives ç in the US layout. Sadly, opt+o gives ø. But luckily for me, opt+o gives œ in the Swedish layout, which is the one I use in combination with US. I’d say you’ll be better off keeping your layouts as vanilla as possible, otherwise you’d be handicapped when using someone else’s computer. So, US layout as QWERTY. Think of it as nice brain training :)

2011-12-04 17-22

Comment from: Gus

Does anyone here knows where and how I might get a SILICONE KEYBOARD COVER for Macs, that would fit this particular keyboard? Please send me the information. Thank you!

2014-07-20 22-26

Comment from: Vlad

I use ten languages under Mac preferences, and have them on the top drop-down menu. For the small differences in European languages, I just memorize the placement of the characters on the regular QWERTY keyboard. It becomes second nature for most; otherwise I get help from the keyboard viewer.

2015-06-09 17-45

Comment from: Laszlo Lebrun

Ukelele is one solution, Karabiner is a better one. I have placed Screen copy on F13 Copy on F14 Paste on F15 [ on F16 ] on F17 \on F19 “show desktop” on F19.

I never want to miss that.

2022-04-02 19-11

Comment from: Laszlo Lebrun

P.S. better start with the Swiss keyboard if you write in German too.

2022-04-02 19-14