Bépo layout

The Bépo keyboard layout is an ergonomic, French‑oriented arrangement designed to reduce finger travel and hand fatigue. It places the most frequent French letters on the home row and groups vowels on the left side to promote alternating hand usage, a configuration derived from statistical analysis of the language. The layout also includes comprehensive support for French typographic symbols such as « », ’, …, and a wide range of diacritics, as well as characters needed for other Latin‑based EU languages, Esperanto, Welsh, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Icelandic, Greek, mathematical symbols, superscripts, subscripts, and monetary signs, accessed via a system of dead keys.

Bépo is intended for typists, programmers, and anyone who regularly types French or multilingual text and seeks a more comfortable alternative to standard AZERTY or QWERTY layouts. It aims to lower the risk of musculoskeletal strain by keeping keystrokes on the home row and providing efficient access to a large set of characters without resorting to compose sequences.

The layout is distributed under a free license and is available for GNU/Linux, Unix, Windows, and macOS, with installation packages and learning tools such as Dactylotest and Bépoète. It is maintained by the Association Ergodis, which offers support through email, Discord, and a forum, and it has been standardized by AFNOR as NF Z71‑300, an annex to