AZERTY keyboards for French Pre Plus and Pixi Plus | webOS Nation
 
 

AZERTY keyboards for French Pre Plus and Pixi Plus 20

by Derek Kessler Fri, 16 Apr 2010 8:48 pm EDT

AZERTY Pre Plus

Want to see the Palm Pre Plus coming to SFR soon? How about just the keyboard? Accented French characters, Euro currency sign, and AZERTY layout. No surprises here - just as with the anticipated prices.

[source: Palm Pre France]

Thanks to Phillipe for the tip!

20 Comments

Nice, I'm really curious.... why is the a and q switched from English to French?

Because it's an AZERTY keyboard, and not QZERTY ;) Check out the first six letters on the top left-hand side. This is where AZERTY comes from. Your keyboard is likely QWERTY if you are in the US. There are different key layouts for different areas of the world.

That is a stupid reply. He did not ask what is Azerty, he asked Why AZERTY?
The QWERTY layout, which was patented in 1868, was specifically designed to avoid the jamming of keys on the earliest mechanical typewriters, which were mass-produced by the firearms manufacturer, Remington. On the earliest typewriters, the typebars supporting neighbouring keys would often become locked together when activated in quick succession. The QWERTY layout was therefore devised so that the letters most frequently occurring next to each other in the English language would be positioned as far apart as possible on the keyboard, and so be least likely to jam against each other.

The AZERTY layout appeared in France in the last decade of the 19th century as a variation on certain American QWERTY typewriters. Its exact origins eluded historians as well as pioneers and advocates of typewriters. At the start of the 20th century, the French

Thank you for explaining that to me :)

also he is probably not from the usa or he read fast so he misunderstood the question so no problem there :)

Thanks for trying though coasterer

thank you for that. I occasionally learn cool things about my Pre or computers on this site, but it was nice to get a little history/culture lesson. *thumbs up*

I wonder if its because "q" occurs quite commonly in French words and it a bit tiring to type "q" using the left hand pinky on manual typewriters.

Has the backspace key always been next to the enter key on the Pre Plus? Or is that a French thing?

It's because the home row on an AZERTY keyboard includes the M, so they didn't have room for the backspace on the middle row on the Pre and the only sensible thing they could do would be put it next to the enter.

French thing. My Pre Plus has the backspace above the return key.

nice find! That's definitevely a french thing. . . . Backspace next to enter. . . Weird. . .but I am assuming that's what the azerty keyboard layout is like.

LOL! Just hope that you don't inadvertently send that error laden message you were trying to correct!

nice find! That's definitevely a french thing. . . . Backspace next to enter. . . Weird. . .but I am assuming that's what the azerty keyboard layout is like.

I'm still waiting for that DVORAK keyboard, Palm.
. . . and waiting.

kkhadmd you simply made my day. This was simply the best smack in the face with information I have seen in recent months. Thank you for the insight.

damn. wish my pixi could sport a QWERTZ keyboard. thatd be badass. id confused many with just one letter change >:D now, and AZERTY, on the other hand, is like mobile suicide for us americans who'd have to accustom our thumbs to such awkward button positionry.

wow thanks kkhadmd, I always thought I was dumb when I would ask what qwerty keyboard meant... No I can be the smart one and explain it, prolly not as well as you

Reading US forums I noted that there are a LOT of you that are so "my reality is THE reality". Open your minds, guys, there are a lot of world outside the US, and althought on other countries we share with you a lot of things, we have also our own details that make our world easier for us...

QWERTY is an US distribution, thought for english typing...

who are you and what are you talking about? There are other worlds? ;)

well, There ARE other worlds out there! Like far out , man.

well, There ARE other worlds out there! Like far out , man.