Nice idea, but as a french with slight dispraxia/hand coordination issues (If I am typing fast, at least half of the time I write "function" will become "function", and that's without special keys in the mix), it seems like even after learning it, I probably would have a greater error rate than with AZERTY:
One of the big advantage of the current layout is that, except for some rare cases such as "ë", special characters are the primary letter of the key instead of numbers like in QWERTY.
Even ê, which need composition with ^, has the advantage to have both symbols on the same hand so there are not much coordination issues.
The only current common daily-life cases where I need complex coordination that I can think of are:
- End of sentence+uppercase for the new one: not a big issue as the end of a sentence usually is a natural point to slow a bit as the next one will have another mental context.
- Acronyms, names: An issue, but I usually don't right three of them per line.
- Special characters uppercase. I agree with the author on those, but on the other hand, many simply do not write them and for a long time, most people were even told it was a mistake to put accents on uppercase even when hand-writing. So this one is only a big issue with those that are quite pedantic about using special characters on uppercase.
- Programming: This one is a non-issue as the bottleneck is not my typing speed so I can take my time.
- numbers: I choose laptops with numpads
On the other hand, accents are everywhere and can pop up in the middle of a word: "Loïc, tu pourrais aller chercher du pain à la boulangerie où on a mangé hier ?". To write this, I currently have 3 hard sequences, 2 if we count Loïc as a single one. With a keyboards where all accents are special cases, that becomes 5 or 4. If the "?" had been a "." and we count Loïc as one, it would be 3, so in both cases, AZERTY, to me, seem easier to use.
I am not saying this layout is a bad idea and should not be standardized, but at least personally, I would have a hard time with it.
One of the big advantage of the current layout is that, except for some rare cases such as "ë", special characters are the primary letter of the key instead of numbers like in QWERTY. Even ê, which need composition with ^, has the advantage to have both symbols on the same hand so there are not much coordination issues.
The only current common daily-life cases where I need complex coordination that I can think of are: - End of sentence+uppercase for the new one: not a big issue as the end of a sentence usually is a natural point to slow a bit as the next one will have another mental context. - Acronyms, names: An issue, but I usually don't right three of them per line. - Special characters uppercase. I agree with the author on those, but on the other hand, many simply do not write them and for a long time, most people were even told it was a mistake to put accents on uppercase even when hand-writing. So this one is only a big issue with those that are quite pedantic about using special characters on uppercase. - Programming: This one is a non-issue as the bottleneck is not my typing speed so I can take my time. - numbers: I choose laptops with numpads
On the other hand, accents are everywhere and can pop up in the middle of a word: "Loïc, tu pourrais aller chercher du pain à la boulangerie où on a mangé hier ?". To write this, I currently have 3 hard sequences, 2 if we count Loïc as a single one. With a keyboards where all accents are special cases, that becomes 5 or 4. If the "?" had been a "." and we count Loïc as one, it would be 3, so in both cases, AZERTY, to me, seem easier to use.
I am not saying this layout is a bad idea and should not be standardized, but at least personally, I would have a hard time with it.