<div dir="ltr"><h1 itemprop="headline" id="story-heading" class="">France Plans a New Keyboard to Shift Control to Typists</h1>
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<p class=""><span class="" itemprop="author creator" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">By <span class="" itemprop="name">AURELIEN BREEDEN</span></span>JAN. 22, 2016
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<p class="" itemprop="articleBody" id="story-continues-1">PARIS — Bad spelling? Incorrect grammar? It’s all in the keyboard.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody" id="story-continues-2">French
is a difficult language to write, but writing correctly is “nearly
impossible” with existing French keyboards, and the government has
decided to do something about it.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">The
Culture Ministry has called for the creation of a standardized keyboard
that would make it easier to use accents, ligatures and special
characters that make the French language unique but also frustratingly
difficult to type.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">Auto-correcting smartphones can do the job. But the Culture Ministry wrote in a <a href="http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/Politiques-ministerielles/Langue-francaise-et-langues-de-France/Politiques-de-la-langue/Langues-et-numerique/Les-technologies-de-la-langue-et-la-normalisation/Vers-une-norme-francaise-pour-les-claviers-informatiques">statement</a> on Jan. 15 that “it is nearly impossible to correctly write in French with a keyboard” sold in <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/france/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about France." class="">France</a>.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">A recent <a href="http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/content/download/132976/1439046/version/1/file/Rep%C3%A8re_claviers_enligne.pdf">report</a>
by the branch of the ministry that deals with language policy noted
that the AZERTY keyboard layout, used only in France and parts of
Belgium, had never been standardized.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">Most countries use the QWERTY keyboard layout, named for the first six letters of the keyboard’s upper row.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody" id="story-continues-3">“Depending
on what operating system you are using and on the manufacturer of the
keyboard, some keys are not available in the same place, or are not
available at all,” the report said, using the “at” sign, or @, and the
euro currency sign, or €, as examples. “It is often impossible or very
difficult to type certain characters that are very common in the French
language with our ‘French’ keyboards.”</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">The
AZERTY keyboard does have dedicated keys for commonly used accented
letters like é or è. But typing other characters like the cedilla (<em>ç</em>), or ligatures (like in <em>cœur</em>,
French for heart, or Lætitia, the name) can require complex keyboard
shortcuts that are hard to master. Accentuating capital letters (<em>État</em>) can be so complicated that some have even been led to believe — incorrectly — that it is not necessary, the report lamented.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">The ministry has asked France’s national standardization body, known as <a href="http://www.afnor.org/en">AFNOR</a>,
to come up with a norm for French keyboards. The norm would not be
mandatory, but would give manufacturers, software developers and others a
common reference point, and could be used as a condition in government
procurement.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">Philippe
Magnabosco, who heads the keyboard project at AFNOR, said that French
spelling and grammar were not too complicated for computer keyboards,
and there was no reason France could not do better than some of its
European neighbors or French-speaking partners, like Canada or Belgium,
which have developed keyboard norms that are better suited to typing in
French.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">“There
are languages that are much more complex to write, but that have
keyboards that perfectly suit their needs,” he said. “Look at the Czechs
or the Poles, who have accents in every direction, and who have
perfectly suitable keyboards.”</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody" id="story-continues-4">Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin said in <a href="http://www.itele.fr/chroniques/invite-politique-ferrari-tirs-croises/fleur-pellerin-je-suis-tout-a-fait-favorable-a-ce-que-letat-durgence-soit-prolonge-150787">an interview with the iTélé news channel</a>
on Wednesday that there were no plans to completely overhaul the AZERTY
keyboard. Instead, Mr. Magnabosco said, the goal is to rearrange and
tweak existing symbols without physically adding more rows or keys.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody" id="story-continues-5">“Why
should the micron sign or the pound sterling sign figure so prominently
today?” he said. “We need to give them a spot that matches more closely
their frequency of use, and use the space that’s freed for signs that
we use daily.”</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody" id="story-continues-6">The
goal is also to make it easier for French keyboard users to write in
other European languages and regional languages specific to France, like
Breton or Occitan.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">AFNOR
will consult with other institutions and companies before putting
forward a proposed project in the summer this year. After an open survey
on the project, the norm is expected to be made official in early 2017.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">Despite
technological advances, alternative ways of typing and reading text —
like voice dictation and recognition software — are still imperfect,
said Rachel Panckhurst, an associate professor in computational
linguistics at the University of Montpellier 3, in southern France.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">So
keyboards are still the norm, and standardizing them to make writing
and spelling in French easier is important, she said, even if France
sticks to the AZERTY layout.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">“I
don’t think it is a good idea to change everything, because people have
been used to these keyboards for so many decades,” Ms. Panckhurst said.
“Doing a radical change might mean that it just ends up in the rubbish
bin.”</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/world/europe/france-plans-a-new-keyboard-to-shift-control-to-typists.html?_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/world/europe/france-plans-a-new-keyboard-to-shift-control-to-typists.html?_r=0</a><br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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