Using French AZERTY keyboards

[Dragon27]

Incidentally, the "US International" keyboard and the "UK Extended" keyboard both seem to access the same accents in the same way.

Not exactly. Acute accent dead key is ' on US International and AltGr+' on UK extended.

But what if... what if one day you decide to learn Polish? There doesn't seem to be a way to enter the letters with 'ogonek' on any of these two. Ǫ Ę

[Le Baron]

You can just google for an image of the azerty keyboard and then keep it beside your machine. I just went ahead and bought an azerty keyboard myself since it was only about £14. Most of the keys with the accent marks are where the function keys are on mine. for example F7 = è and F9=ç

I wrote a reply post earlier which seems to have disappeared?!

I use an AZERTY keyboard which I swap out when I'm only typing French and the è and ç are located on 2 and 9 rather than F7, F9. My bigger problem is getting such things as 'œ' or Ç (or any of the capital versions of the accented letters) without using alt plus a code. You'd think switching to an entirely different actual keyboard would provide for that.

[Dragon27]

'œ'

They don't even have that? Weird. Well, I guess, the only option is to create a custom keyboard layout. Or use Mac, I don't know.

edit:
There's some kind of new and improved AZERTY layout (AFNOR compliant), that allows entering of these characters.
http://norme-azerty.fr/
The installations files somewhere at the bottom.

[Doitsujin]

But what if... what if one day you decide to learn Polish? There doesn't seem to be a way to enter the letters with 'ogonek' on any of these two. Ǫ Ę

If you have a Windows machine, you could use WinCompose. Or you could create your own layout with the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator using this tutorial.

[lavengro]

Instead of downloading the AZERTY keyboard, do you have the option of downloading instead the following:

French (Canada) Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard.

Unless there are regional variations in the Windows 10 software, it should be an option for you and I believe you will find easier access to some of the more elusive characters being discussed, including Ç, È and É. I never have to use alt codes.

[Le Baron]

Instead of downloading the AZERTY keyboard, do you have the option of downloading instead the following:

French (Canada) Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard.

Unless there are regional variations in the Windows 10 software, it should be an option for you and I believe you will find easier access to some of the more elusive characters being discussed, including Ç, È and É. I never have to use alt codes.

I just added it (I'm on Linux) and some of the upper case acute accented letters are easily accessible. ÉÇÈ. Some of the keys on the layout aren't even on my physical keyboard. There are are few others so I'll experiment. Cheers.

[smallwhite]

The thread title disappointed. Can the typo be changed, please?

[risbolle]

<...>
I just added it (I'm on Linux) and some of the upper case acute accented letters are easily accessible. ÉÇÈ. Some of the keys on the layout aren't even on my physical keyboard. There are are few others so I'll experiment. Cheers.

I'm on GNU/Linux, Gnome on Ubuntu; YMMV. While there are a number of ways to set up your key mappings on a modern GNU-based system, I thought I'd show off my favourite weapon of choice:

1) Main keyboard layout: English (intl., with AltGr dead keys)
- All keys work as in standard US layout, except when AltGr (right Alt) is pressed.
- The following letters are accessible as a two-key combination (AltGr + <alphanumeric key>):
äåéëþüúíóö«»»¬áßðfghïœø¶ǽœ©®bñµç¿
- In addition, the following are accessible as a three-key combo (AltGr + <diacritic symbol> followed by <letter key>):
ẁèỳùìòàǜǹm̀éẃýúíóṕáśĺǽêŵŷûîôáẑĉẇėṙṫẏḋḟġḣṅ
- Plus the capitals and a few other symbols I've missed.

That should cover most Germanic and Romance languages and then perhaps some, all within a single layout (personally, a key advantage).
You can see that some symbols can be entered using both methods (the former is faster).
Once I've got that added, I remove the default English layout - no more need for it unless you use AltGr+<key> for application shortcuts.

Some Latin-based scripts are, of course, still out of luck with this. For those I'd probably add a specific layout, but there are other options.

The only caveats I can think of right now:
- Can't map AltGr+<key> to user program shortcuts;
- Three-key combos, while intuitive, are less efficient than dedicated layouts.

2) Add extra layouts for non-Latin or other national scripts as need be (Russian Cyrillic in my case).

Edit to add:
The Compose Key X Window feature is an alternative to (1) (it may be disabled in a default install - needs a single toggle switch to enable plus a choice of the key). On its own, I find it less efficient than (1) for my purposes, but its coverage is superior (let's see: ł ą ę ó ń ś ź ż - I think I've now got Polish; again, never switching to another layout). Luckily, it can also be used simultaneously with (1) (just need to make a convenient choice for the key).

[Dragon27]

Or you could create your own layout with the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator

Yeah, I know. That's exactly what I did a couple of years ago - created a universal custom layout to cover all my Latin alphabet needs. Mostly European ones, though. There's a lot of additional latin-based characters in the alphabets of the languages of Africa, but since I don't have much interest in learning any of these, I decided not to bother. Same goes for Native American languages (for example, there are some letters that combine acute accent with ogonek: ą́, ę́, ǫ́).
I've also played with ways of introducing the possibility of entering Vietnamese letters with my layout, but it was already busy enough (all the special letters, diacritics, math symbols, what have you) so eventually I gave it up. Vietnamese alphabet has some crazy stacking diacritics, and, taking into consideration how dense they are in a typical text, it would probably be too slow and awkward to have to press all those modifier keys all the time, so if I ever actually get around to learning the language, it would be much simpler to just use one of the ways Vietnamese people themselves use for typing (TELEX or VNI on UniKey).

[Le Baron]

I remember now why I liked pen and paper. So much easier.