Keyboards - Availability in Canada

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 02:14:44PM -0500, Christopher Browne wrote:
> This one's not necessarily as one would assume...
> 
> The usual requirement tends to involve being bilingual in *spoken* language.

Well from what I read, at least the government of quebec requires their
computers to have the CAN/CSA Z243.200-92 keyboard layout.

The canadian government also seems to prefer them in most cases:
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=17253

> Being very highly capable in both languages in written form would tend
> to primarily be required of translators, and while the Canadian
> government probably has more of those than anybody other than the
> British and French governments, it's still only a small portion of the
> civil service.
> 
> And for those in the translation specialty, "dueling keyboards" won't
> be a feature :-).  Much more effective for such staff to have *one*
> keyboard (of whichever linguistic preference) that they get very good
> with.
> 
> After all... Je peut utiliser mon "anglais" clavier pour ecrire un
> texte francais.  I have never bothered figuring out accents on my
> keyboard, but I don't need a different keyboard layout for that!

Well for occifial documents, accents probably matter quite a bit.

> What I'd expect to be the case is that individuals might order
> whichever keyboard they prefer to use, with there possibly being some
> policy limitations.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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