Microduck

Post by rokbenko » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 8:56 AM UTC

Ambroos wrote: post #224

skerit wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a bit weird. As someone from Belgium (we also use our own variety of Azerty) you are very frequently reminded that you're on a weird keyboard. At least for someone who games, you wouldn't make ZQSD the default. It's the first thing you do in every game, change WASD to ZQSD

Another Belgian here, the first thing I did when I started working is switch to International English keyboards. Some employers wanted me to use local keyboards but I always managed to convince them to let me get another one in the end.

Post by rokbenko » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 8:57 AM UTC

d3Xt3r wrote: post #198

silisili wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started out playing Quake 1 many moons ago, when I complained about how to reach keybindings as I was using the arrow keys, a veteran player on the server told me patiently to use ESDF like a normal person. So I did, and learned, and it stuck with me. It wasn't until years later I realized that was more a rarity and people usually use WASD. I kept ESDF because I was used to it, and because it's nice have those…

There was an interesting discussion around this a couple of years ago, I was quite surprised to see people still using ESDF: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41148889

Post by rokbenko » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 8:57 AM UTC

bazzargh wrote: post #154

lambda wrote: post #75

Tried out the simulator and was surprised to find that the movement keys are ZQSD; then realized that's the equivalent of WASD on an AZERTY keyboard. Checked and sure enough, Pollen Robotics is a French company. They may want to at least add a preference for keyboard layout, pretty sure that QWERTY and QWERTZ are much more common worldwide than AZERTY.

Interestingly, the 10-lines-of-basic competition, which has been running the last 15 years ( https://itch.io/profile/bunsen ), has this covered in the rules: 15. If the game is controlled with the keyboard, use "O" for left, "P" for right, "E" for up and "D" for down if possible; this takes into account the most important keyboard layouts (no disadvantages for emulator users with QWERTZ, QWERTY or AZERTY keyboards)

Post by rokbenko » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 8:57 AM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #180

lambda wrote: post #75

Tried out the simulator and was surprised to find that the movement keys are ZQSD; then realized that's the equivalent of WASD on an AZERTY keyboard. Checked and sure enough, Pollen Robotics is a French company. They may want to at least add a preference for keyboard layout, pretty sure that QWERTY and QWERTZ are much more common worldwide than AZERTY.

Typing bash commands on a colleague’s French keyboard was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life.

Post by rokbenko » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 8:58 AM UTC

renaudg wrote: post #253

lambda wrote: post #75

Tried out the simulator and was surprised to find that the movement keys are ZQSD; then realized that's the equivalent of WASD on an AZERTY keyboard. Checked and sure enough, Pollen Robotics is a French company. They may want to at least add a preference for keyboard layout, pretty sure that QWERTY and QWERTZ are much more common worldwide than AZERTY.

They should do a deal: “We fix this for QWERTY users, and in return American web devs vow to stop filtering out Shift in numeric fields, which is fine on QWERTY but prevents AZERTY users from typing top-row digits because those digits require Shift.” Apparently this bad habit impacts DVORAK users too : https://brennan.io/2021/03/03/textboxes/