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AZERTY vs Colemak Mod-DH

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31 1

When comparing AZERTY vs Colemak Mod-DH, the Slant community recommends Colemak Mod-DH for most people. In the question“What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?” Colemak Mod-DH is ranked 5th while AZERTY is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Colemak Mod-DH is:

Some people find moving D and H to the bottom row much more comfortable (especially with flat keyboards). Curved keyboards like the Kinesis Advantage also help with lateral motion. Regular Colemak on these keyboards might be the ideal solution since then you help resolve some of the cons of regular Colemak without adding on the ones from Mod DH.

Specs

No specs yet!

Bottom Row Key Freq.13.5%

Consecutive Same-Hand Keystrokes (L/R)40.2%/59.8%

Home Row Key Freq.56.0%

Left Index Finger Travel34.3%

Left Index Finger Usage16.8%

Left Little Finger Travel0.9%

Left Little Finger Usage6.4%

Left Middle Finger Travel14.5%

Left Middle Finger Usage10.1%

Left Ring Finger Travel5.1%

Left Ring Finger Usage7.8%

Right Index Finger Travel31.4%

Right Index Finger Usage16.2%

Right Little Finger Travel0.7%

Right Little Finger Usage6.2%

Right Middle Finger Travel7.8%

Right Middle Finger Usage14.0%

Right Ring Finger Travel5.4%

Right Ring Finger Usage7.4%

Spacebar Row Key Freq.15.3%

Thumb Usage15.3%

Top Row Key Freq.15.2%

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?

AZERTY

Colemak Mod-DH

Pros

Pro
Nearly unavoidable for French people

Most of us learned to type with this kind of keyboard, switching can be hard, and impractical to type French.

Pro
HJKL intact for vim

Vim programmers are going to want their navigation keys to relate to each other in a sensible fashion. QWERTY and azerty seem to be the only games in town for this

Pro
Much less lateral hand movement compared with regular Colemak

Pro
Easy to learn from Colemak

No keys change fingers from Colemak (with the possible exception of Z , which is rarely used, in one variant).

Pro
'HE' easier to type compared with regular Colemak

Pro
Letter G goes back to its original QWERTY position

This puts ING all on the middle row. Regular Colemak has G in the top row.

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Cons

Con
Bad for programming

But you get used to it... :-)
Characters very common in programming languages, like [] {} ~#|`@ are reachable only via the infamous AltGr key on Windows computers (and perhaps Linux ones; not sure for Macs).
With practice, you type them without thinking, but it is still a rather impractical gymnastics.

Con
CTRL + / is only accessible by numpad

Con
Regular Colemak is more standard

Mac and Linux have regular Colemak keyboard options. This isn't an issue if your keyboard is programmable through QMK, VIA, etc.

Con
Breaks up ZXCV slightly

Breaks up ZXCV (moves V over one space). Could cause copy paste confusion if also using other layouts like QWERTY. For ANSI layouts the Z is also moved to a new position.

Con
No Innate Layout Configuration In Keybr

Keybr supports Standard Colemak but in order to adjust to DH Mod you must use an extension like tampermonkey and run a Script like this one and adjust to fit whichever variant.