tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post7338911477521410211..comments2023-09-29T04:16:21.746-04:00Comments on Tales from a Grouch: Accented characters in domain names are a terrible ideaRealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-13858700649373442142011-09-27T12:43:18.147-04:002011-09-27T12:43:18.147-04:00Accents and keyboards are one of those examples of...Accents and keyboards are one of those examples of how American English Canada really is.<br /><br />All over Europe, country-specific keyboards are the norm, even in English-speaking Great Britain. This may have been due to most countries having their own currency with its own symbol until the launch of the Euro (whereas Canada, of course, just used the dollar sign used in the US). Countries with multiple official languages have keyboard layouts to accommodate the characters used in their official languages.<br /><br />Canada, too, "on paper" has keyboard layouts to accommodate English and French. Indeed, Canada has two such layouts, French Canadian and Canadian Multilingual:<br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layouts#Canadian_French_.28Quebec.29<br /><br />But good luck finding one for sale anywhere*, and if you do, chances are it'll cost you a lot extra. Some keyboards in the federal government are 'Canadian', but all too often the IT guys have simply left the OS (i.e. Windows) set to US:US so naturally the keyboard "doesn't work".<br /><br />As with things like date formats and paper sizes, Canadians are essentially American in all but name.<br /><br />*The exception is with netbooks, but here all hell seems to break loose. I recall seeing some pretty negative comments from some purchasers of netbooks that had international or Canadian multilingual keyboard layouts (I imagine the Asian creators of these netbooks couldn't imagine Canadians being such pricks when it comes to their own official keyboard layouts). In fact, the negativity is still ongoing:<br /><br />http://brainbits.ca/death-to-the-canadian-multilingual-bilingual-keyboard/<br /><br />Perhaps Lucien Bouchard was right all those years ago: Canada is not a real country.Davidnoreply@blogger.com