Subject: Re: Telephone query about Canadian keyboard standard

From: "Alain LaBont:e':" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 15:38:18 -0500

At 10:03 14/02/1996 EST, [email-masked] wrote:
>
>Hello Alain
>
>I just had a phone call from a fella in California who would like
>to know what platforms  support the CSA (English/French)
>Keyboard.   Would you be able to give me an idea where I
>might find such information?  If not, it's ok.

So far it's only supported by OEMs on DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95... and
some that I know of are also looking for its support in Windows NT and OS/2. 

And it's an industrial standard for Apple in Canada. It's their only
"French" keyboard throughout the country.

I know when it was a prelimiary standard, AT&T also put it on its UNIX
systems. I don't know now that it is a national standard.

The preliminary keyboard was also implemented on IBM 327x terminals in the
Quebec government by IBM (all what was required were keycaps and a
controller diskette, thanks to a nice technology). I'm not sure if this was
upgraded for the national standard but it would not have been complicated to
do so.

I and many others have been making pressure on Microsoft and IBM for years
for incorporating this as a standard everywhere on all software platforms
but none has made the official move yet... for unknown reasons which makes
the case obscure.

Microsoft implemented (against its will, see later on the story below!) the
*preliminary* standard in Windows 3.0, 3.1, 95, and NT but there was slight
a bug in it which they never corrected (the sad but true story is that
Canadian Microsoft marketing had refused to do the job before the release of
3.0 when the preliminary standard existed and that a programmer in Seattle
had [subversively!] made the interface because he had a physcical keyboard
in his/her hands; so they lost face when the product was released as they
were still saying they would not do it until somebody discovered that it was
there; after that they said: it is there, don't bother us with that; that's
a company who pretends to listen its customers!!!) They never corrected the
bug nor made the upgrade to the national standard, but they still provide
the bugged interface (reprogrammed each time because interfaces are
incompatible among these systems) with all new releases of Windows.

For IBM, they say there is not a sufficient market and that there is no
demand, which is wrong: the Quebec and Canadian governments (in bilingual
areas only, in the latter case, but this is a relatively big market) demand
it and IBM points to OEMs for both physical keyboards and drivers (with the
result that I can't use it on OS/2, and I guess the same is true for AIX).

This is the Candadian standard keyboard landscape. If somebody who is
listening can do something, please help us spreading the word. That's the
only Canadian standard in the area of keyboards, it seems reasonable that
majors implement it. Most users who tasted it don't want to go back. Only
Apple did behave as a good corporate citizen in this whole story and *all*
their users are satisfied (I never met one dissatisfied about that keyboard
which is objectively much better than the previous IBM defacto standard [in
which to do a c cedilla you need to type 2 keys, while it is the only French
character with a cedilla]; the IBm de facto standard was not designed by
French-speaking people, and that is obvious when one uses it).

Regards.

Alain

cc CA-I18N, IBM people, unfortunately no Microsoft email contact