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Add to SafariWhen comparing AZERTY vs Row Swap (QWDFGY), the Slant community recommends Row Swap (QWDFGY) for most people. In the question“What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?” Row Swap (QWDFGY) is ranked 9th while AZERTY is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Row Swap (QWDFGY) is:
It scores 2.122 on the Carpalx effort model, vs 2.098 for Dvorak (QWERTY is 3.000).
Question Ranking
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 As effortless as Dvorak
It scores 2.122 on the Carpalx effort model, vs 2.098 for Dvorak (QWERTY is 3.000).
Pro Very easy to learn from QWERTY
The swaps are strictly vertical. No letter changes fingers. Possibly even easier to learn than other minimal-change layouts like qwpr and Minimak-4.
Pro Common Ctrl-shortcuts don't move
Most letters are in their QWERTY position, including the important AZXCV. Those that moved are very close to their old positions.
Pro Good for Vim users
HJKL are still in order.
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 Punctuation is not optimized
Punctuation is just as bad as Colemak.
