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Re: Update on the CA/CF keyboard issue



Le 4 Janvier 2007 22:05, Shiori Tamura a écrit :
> Dear Mr. Gillas, Mr. Knopper
>
> Regarding the “French Canadian Keyboard” issue,
(...)

> 5. <]> and <c> on US-keyboard -> ç
>     <]> and <C> on US-keyboard -> Ç

You Japanese are certainly more zen then us in Quebec to produce your 
characters with all kind of strange keys! I got my first computer 
with DOS 4 in 1989 and I could already type such characters as " à " 
with " ` " and "  a " in everyapplication. That was the CF keyboard, 
which had been in use for a century on typewriters. 

Then, some 10 years ago, came a new keyboard, the CA, with which you 
could type " à ",  " è " and " ç " in one stoke. 

Now, in KDE (I don't know how it works in Windows), the CF is called 
CA and the CA is called CA Multix. All the other variants Multi, fr, 
Ike, etc, make absolutely no sense to me. But, with very little 
difference, I now can get my CA keyboard using CA Multix. So, let's 
say, once I got through this new naming stupidity, I was OK.

The only problem that remain is with OOo which doesn't recognize 
characters such as ï or ô which are typed in two stokes such as  
" ¨ " and " i ".

This problem occured before and was corrected.

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005 15:24:29 -0400, in Subject: Quick survey of 3.9, I 
wrote to Klaus (not on the list, personnaly):

"OpenOffice now recognize the keyboard in KDE"

On Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 21:51:59 +0200, Klaus replied:

" So, I take it, OpenOffice2 is better than 1.x? "

Now, at least since Knoppix 5.0.1, the problem is back. It's one of 
those problems that make life a misery for users and that developers 
care very little about, since they won't make a name caring for this 
kind of problem. This is the kind of place where Microsoft's drones 
can intervene to make Linux go down the charts.

Maybe it's not Klaus' problem, maybe it's Debian's or KDE's or OOo. 
Maybe it's X.org's problem. (the CA keyboard file, ca_enhanced, used 
to in /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/. Now it has disappred.) God knows! As a 
simple user, not a programmer, you may spend years putting pressure 
to have the problem solved. You can do the same for your printer that 
works, doesn't work, works, doesn't work, depending on the release, 
to have fonts that are readable in Firefox's URL window, to get rid 
of this ridiculously small search window in favor of the previous 
search button using the URL window, to have The GIMP'S selection be 
modified simply by pulling nodes on the sides and seeing the aspect 
ration change in the status bar, to explain delicately, then no so 
delicately, that the picture used for a background is completely 
rotten, etc., etc., etc.,

Or, you may have enough being qualified as a ranter and switch to 
proprietary software, where no drones are allowed to fuck things up, 
where people are paid by bosses to take care of the non-prestigious 
*details*, where developers *listen* to users' requests. You might 
decide to let the kids "have fun" while Linux goes down the charts 
and they refuse to rethink their development model. (They don't have 
time: they work too hard running around in circles!)

A friend of mine, who's an electronic engineer and a very early Linux 
adopter, keeps laughing at me saying "I told you there is no quality 
control". After years of trying and trying, I have to admit he's 
right. So, this time, unless Debian comes with a radically different 
release, I'll try the second solution. But Knoppix is partly based on 
Etch and I really doubt Etch will be anything but the usual nonsense.

Thanks for the suggestion, but, as for myself, that's the only 
solution I see to *my* keyboard problem.



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