4 ms·

In slightly related news, Ontario just last year finally allowed people to use accented characters in their official legal names, birth certificates, and so on.

by retrac 5y ago

In slightly related news, Ontario just last year finally allowed people to use accented characters in their official legal names, birth certificates, and so on. French has been an official language in Ontario for over half a century. The reason it wasn't possible until recently was entirely technical. The systems were limited by ASCII or, yeah, possibly EBCDIC. (I don't have the details.) Still no guidance on how the average government clerk with the very common US-style layout is supposed to type them in, though. https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/58538/ontario-introduces-french-accents-on-drivers-licences-and-ontario-photo-cards https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/58538/ontario-introduces-...

gspr 5y ago
What I don't understand when I hear stories like these is why the hell not just use someone else's solution? Surely neighboring Québec had this sorted out ages ago – why not just duplicated whatever they did? Problem solved in no time. Going further, I wonder why for example the EU doesn't try to get schemes going that facilitate the copying of IT solutions between member states. Why does every country have to reinvent the wheel?
- coldacid 5y ago
  I think even the Quebecois hate the French-Canadian keyboard layout. Certainly it's incredibly hated here in Ontario.
  - kps 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSA_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSA_keyboard is just awful — it uses ‘right Control’ as a graphic-shift modifier for most characters, instead of AltGraph/Option. (It also uses AltGraph/Option for some common characters like []<> and for French «».) You can't find a better example of government committee work anywhere.
  - toyg 5y ago
    You mean the Québécois, surely (sorry, couldn't resist - on topic for the thread...)
  - jackjeff 5y ago
    I grew up in France and I hate the PC French keyboard with Alt Grrr with a passion.
- pas 5y ago
  Corruption, and putting too big emphasis on having their own system so they are not dependent on someone else. Hopefully we'll move past these eventually.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Someone told me they solved it quite simply and elegantly: There's a law that says: "For a computer system to be purchased by the government it must work in French". Implementation is then left to potential sellers.
coldacid 5y ago
There /is/ a US-International layout which uses both AltGr style and compose style entry of accented characters, although it's not the best. I actually made my own customized version of US-International for Windows in order to support more options for accented characters and certain extended Latin characters used in old and middle English.
- toyg 5y ago
  I really wanted to use US-International, but the way it breaks quotes and double-quotes is so bad, I ended up with similar hacks in Windows (via AutoHotKey). It's one of those things where Apple really got it right, and I don't understand why MS cannot adopt similar solutions to what the Macs do.
  - _v7gu 5y ago
    AHK is really a hack, but Windows has the best software for keyboard adaptation. I used this to create a custom layout that includes Turkish and Greek characters which helps me a lot https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=102134 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=102...
    - coldacid 5y ago
      Exactly what I used, too.
  - coldacid 5y ago
    You might be interested in my US-International alternative layout. Back when I created it, I also put it up on BitBucket[0] for others, and wrote up some details too[1]. It eschews dead keys for AltGr style composition so there's no need to double-tap any of the keys used for diacritics. [0]: https://bitbucket.org/coldacid/usintalt/src/master/ https://bitbucket.org/coldacid/usintalt/src/master/ [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160327005949/https://chris.charabaruk.com/2014/10/alternate-us-international-keyboard-layout/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160327005949/https://chris.cha...
  - 5y ago

by retrac 5y ago

gspr 5y ago

What I don't understand when I hear stories like these is why the hell not just use someone else's solution? Surely neighboring Québec had this sorted out ages ago – why not just duplicated whatever they did? Problem solved in no time. Going further, I wonder why for example the EU doesn't try to get schemes going that facilitate the copying of IT solutions between member states. Why does every country have to reinvent the wheel?

coldacid 5y ago
I think even the Quebecois hate the French-Canadian keyboard layout. Certainly it's incredibly hated here in Ontario.
- kps 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSA_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSA_keyboard is just awful — it uses ‘right Control’ as a graphic-shift modifier for most characters, instead of AltGraph/Option. (It also uses AltGraph/Option for some common characters like []<> and for French «».) You can't find a better example of government committee work anywhere.
- toyg 5y ago
  You mean the Québécois, surely (sorry, couldn't resist - on topic for the thread...)
- jackjeff 5y ago
  I grew up in France and I hate the PC French keyboard with Alt Grrr with a passion.
pas 5y ago
Corruption, and putting too big emphasis on having their own system so they are not dependent on someone else. Hopefully we'll move past these eventually.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
908B64B197 5y ago
Someone told me they solved it quite simply and elegantly: There's a law that says: "For a computer system to be purchased by the government it must work in French". Implementation is then left to potential sellers.

coldacid 5y ago

There /is/ a US-International layout which uses both AltGr style and compose style entry of accented characters, although it's not the best. I actually made my own customized version of US-International for Windows in order to support more options for accented characters and certain extended Latin characters used in old and middle English.

toyg 5y ago
I really wanted to use US-International, but the way it breaks quotes and double-quotes is so bad, I ended up with similar hacks in Windows (via AutoHotKey). It's one of those things where Apple really got it right, and I don't understand why MS cannot adopt similar solutions to what the Macs do.
- _v7gu 5y ago
  AHK is really a hack, but Windows has the best software for keyboard adaptation. I used this to create a custom layout that includes Turkish and Greek characters which helps me a lot https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=102134 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=102...
  - coldacid 5y ago
    Exactly what I used, too.
- coldacid 5y ago
  You might be interested in my US-International alternative layout. Back when I created it, I also put it up on BitBucket[0] for others, and wrote up some details too[1]. It eschews dead keys for AltGr style composition so there's no need to double-tap any of the keys used for diacritics. [0]: https://bitbucket.org/coldacid/usintalt/src/master/ https://bitbucket.org/coldacid/usintalt/src/master/ [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160327005949/https://chris.charabaruk.com/2014/10/alternate-us-international-keyboard-layout/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160327005949/https://chris.cha...
- 5y ago