[lg policy] PARIS — Bad spelling? Incorrect grammar? It’s all in the keyboard.

Sat Jan 23 15:43:03 UTC 2016

France Plans a New Keyboard to Shift Control to Typists

By AURELIEN BREEDENJAN. 22, 2016

PARIS — Bad spelling? Incorrect grammar? It’s all in the keyboard.

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.

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.

Auto-correcting smartphones can do the job. But the Culture Ministry wrote
in a statement
<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>
on Jan. 15 that “it is nearly impossible to correctly write in French with
a keyboard” sold in France
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/france/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>
.

A recent report
<http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/content/download/132976/1439046/version/1/file/Rep%C3%A8re_claviers_enligne.pdf>
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.

Most countries use the QWERTY keyboard layout, named for the first six
letters of the keyboard’s upper row.

“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.”

The AZERTY keyboard does have dedicated keys for commonly used accented
letters like é or è. But typing other characters like the cedilla (*ç*), or
ligatures (like in *cœur*, French for heart, or Lætitia, the name) can
require complex keyboard shortcuts that are hard to master. Accentuating
capital letters (*État*) can be so complicated that some have even been led
to believe — incorrectly — that it is not necessary, the report lamented.

The ministry has asked France’s national standardization body, known as
AFNOR <http://www.afnor.org/en>, 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.

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.

“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.”

Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin said in an interview with the iTélé news
channel
<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>
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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/world/europe/france-plans-a-new-keyboard-to-shift-control-to-typists.html?_r=0

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its
members
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)

For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/
listinfo/lgpolicy-list
*******************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20160123/634d37b2/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list