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Preamble

This page present the french qwerty keyboard.
Qwerty-fr layout have been designed for french people using qwerty keyboard or Anglo-Saxon people who are typing french texts.

A good example could be the fact that many programmers prefer using qwerty keyboard - considered like a "coders' dvorak" since it allows easy access to symbols - but need also diacritics for word processing.

If you are not looking for a keyboard layout or if you dont want to install anything, you can try this online diacritics tool.

Thanks to Pierre Wacrenier for the Mac OS version of this keyboard layout.

Layout

The keyboard layout is fully compliant with traditionnal qwerty.

This means that standard keys are not replaced by dead keys (key to compose with), traditionnal symbols are at the same place.
However, dead keys (keys ~ ` ' , " ^ ˇ °) are accessible with AltGr key ¹. You can directly access to all french characters using AltGr or build its with compose functionality.

Philosophy overview

Grave accent

Press AltGr + corresponding letter (works for letters e, u, i, o and a).

Acute accent

Press AltGr + key left the corresponding letter (works for the letter e).

Circumflex

Press AltGr + key above the corresponding letter (works for letters e, y, u, i, o and a).

Diaeresis

Press AltGr + key bellow the corresponding letter (works for letters e, y, u, i, o and a).

Cedilla

Press AltGr + corresponding letter (works for the letter c).

Stuck e

Press AltGr + key right the corresponding letter (works for letters o and a).

Overview

More information

Please refer to the man page for more information.

Installation

The keyboard layout is available under Linux/X11 (Debian, Ubuntu), Mac OS 10.4 and later ¹ and for Windows.

.deb packages based Linux
Download deb file and use command dpkg --install

Arch Linux
On the arch user repository page, you will find revelant PKGBUILD

Mac OS ¹
Download tgz archive, extract qwerty-fr.bundle to:
    /Library/Keyboard Layouts/ to install for all users
    ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/ for user-local installation

¹ No dead key are implemented yet for Mac OS

Windows
Download zip archive, extract files and run setup.exe

Keyboard layout tests

The layout passed the following test succefully:

Retyping this sentence without using dead keys on qwerty-fr layout:
"Dès Noël où un zéphyr haï me vêt de glaçons würmiens je dîne d'exquis rôtis de bœuf au kir à l'aÿ d'âge mûr & cæera !"

Known issue

With previous version (until version 0.4), for Linux users, if xkb-data package is updated, configuration set by xkb-qwerty-fr will be overwritten.
You have to reset configuration, typing be following command, then logout and login to your user interface:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure xkb-qwerty-fr

This is issue corrected since version 0.5.