New Canadian keyboard layout

Jean-Michel Dault jmdault at revolutionlinux.com
Sat Dec 4 12:58:29 CST 2004


Le sam 04/12/2004 à 12:59, Vincent Béron a écrit :
> > The keyboard that the Government of Quebec uses is the CAN/CSA
> > Z243.200-92, and is *not defined* in Wine.
> If it is the one I think it is (AKA as Canadian multi-lingual, with the
> "è" in place of the deadkey "`"), nobody I know except the government
> uses it. There's a reason: it's not a good layout to use on a regular
> basis.

It looks a bit like the old Canadian multi-lingual, but it's not quite
the same. 

Not a lot of people use it because these new keyboards are not produced
in the same quantities, so they're more expensive ($99 vs $29). 

However, as for the usage on a regular basis, latest studies show 71% of
corporate users prefer to have a layout with dedicated éèà keys. See
http://www.autoroute.gouv.qc.ca/publica/clavier/faq.htm

> Use ca_enhanced, as everybody else. There's a reason the name has
> "enhanced" in it :)

There was the old "ca", after that there was the "cf", then the
"ca_enhanced", which is not based on "ca" at all, but on the "cf". Then,
they came up with the CAN/CSA Z243.200-92, which has been included in
XFree86 under the name "ca". Add to that the new revision with the Euro
sign. At one point in time, there were 16 slightly different keyboards
used at the Government!

(Yes, I know it doesn't help you for your project)

Just try to explain to the government that if they want to use Wine,
that they have to buy over 80,000 keyboards, and that's not even
counting Federal and Municipal governments. And that would be impossible
since there is a law that says govt agencies have to use the CAN/CSA
keyboard, and Approvisionnements Québec only carries them.

Besides, it's only a patch, someone already did the dirty work of making
the XFree86 symbol file, plus the console layout for iso-8859-1, plus
the utf-8 console layout, plus the Wine layout ;-) 

> > I added the proper keyboard layout, and, apart from the fact that this
> > keyboard uses up to 5 symbols per key and wine only supports 4, I get a
> > 85% score, and every key works, every accent, every deadkey.
> Which one has 5 symbols? I can only count 4 (in your patch getting a
> score of 127).

The CAN/CSA Z243.200-92 has up to 5 symbols per key. See the link below
for the graphic. However, the Wine keyboard definition only supports 4
symbols maximum. The only important thing is that the keys are mapped to
the right place.

> > If you need more information on this keyboard, look into the XFree86
> > sources: http://cvsweb.xfree86.org/cvsweb/xc/programs/xkbcomp/symbols/ca
> > Or for a picture of this keyboard:
> > http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/images/ti/clavier.gif

Jean-Michel Dault
CTO, Revolution Linux inc.





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