good deal on Linux notebook (today only)

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

| Many brands have decided that it is "cheaper" to ship one model to Canada,
| which means they ship it with canadian multilingual (which is NOT the
| old french canadian keyboard).

I always thought that too.  But if
  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Canadian_Multilingual_Standard>
is right, what they are shipping is "Canadian French", not "Canadian
Multilingual Standard".  I know because I'm always typing << instead
of shift.

I really don't know what to make of
  <http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?evttoo=C&id=17253&section=text>.
This 2003 document seems inordinately aware of MSDOS 5 problems ("RAM
cram".  For most substantive content, it refers to
CAN/CSA-Z243.200-91, something you have to buy for $79.00 for 36 pages
of PDF
  <http://shop.csa.ca/en/canada/information-technology/cancsa-z243200-92-r2011/invt/27009551992/>

This standard was published in 1992 and reaffirmed in 2011.  I'd
expect it to be obsoleted and replaced by now -- it might well be.
For one thing, it supports Latin No. 1 which is obsolete (Francophones
don't like Latin 1 since it misses out on the oe character (long funny
story)) (it also predates the euro symbol).  Latin 1 has been
superceded by Latin 9.  Except, I think, that the first 256 code
points in UNICODE correspond to Latin 1.

What a mess.

(I'm still lamenting the swap of ctrl and caps lock keys by IBM.  My
Suns had it right and so did my Atari STs.)
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