A basic understanding of keyboards and how they work around the world can help avoid problems in application development.
QWERTY/AZERTY keyboards
The most common logical keyboard layout for Latin languages is known as QWERTY, based on the first six keys on the upper alphabetic row. This layout was selected to slow down typists in the days of mechanical typewriters. Not all keyboards are laid out in this way. In France, the most common layout is AZERTY (as seen in Figure 2). In Germany and some other countries the Z and Y are reversed giving the QWERTZ layout. An English keyboard with better typing speed is the Dvorak keyboard. Despite the better typing performance, this keyboard has never caught on, but is used for a few specialized purposes.
