CSA keyboard

Figure 1: The Windows version differs from the official standard in terms of the location of dead keys (middle dot ·, tilde ~) and the absence of a few characters, including đ, ⅛ and the dot above ˙. The euro sign € was not included in the Canadian standard in 1992 and is not officially included in the standard yet (R2021). Microsoft added this symbol in 1999 (4 and E keys), following the ISO 9995-3 standard.

The CSA keyboard, or CAN/CSA Z243.200-92, is the official keyboard layout of Canada. Often referred to as ACNOR, it is best known for its use in the Canadian computer industry for the French ACNOR keyboard layout, published as CAN/CSA Z243.200-92. Canadian Multilingual Standard (CMS) on Windows is based on this standard, with a few differences. IBM has also developed a layout based on the CSA keyboard, called Canadian French IBM ID-445. Apple use this layout as their default French Canadian keyboard since the 90s (Canadian - CSA).

ACNOR is an acronym of the former French name (Association canadienne de normalisation) of the CSA Group, a standards organization headquartered in Canada. The initialism CSA (from the former English name Canadian Standards Association) is now used in both official languages.

Description

The standard has undergone some changes but remains focused on the principle of eliminating dead keys as much as possible, using dedicated keys for ÇÈÀÉÙ. For example, the dead key for the cedilla (which can apply to different letters, such as ⟨ț⟩ in Romanian) on the old Canadian French IBM ID-058 keyboards was replaced in the primary group with a key that directly types the c-cedilla ⟨Ç/ç⟩, since it is the only letter in French with this diacritical mark. The cedilla key (dead letter) is still present in the secondary group 2a (see Figure 2) in the Canadian standard. It is possible to completely do without the dead key for the grave accent, as the only three French letters that use it (À, È, and Ù) are directly accessible in both lowercase and uppercase on this keyboard. However, the grave accent (dead key) remains in the primary group to type the characters ù/Ù on an ANSI keyboard, which lacks a key to the left of the Z key. In Figure 2, the rectangles indicate a diacritical mark.

The Canadian standard defines three explicit levels of compliance and one implicit level:

Figure 2: Canadian standard CAN/CSA Z23.200-92. Graphical representation of the input characters from group 1 or primary (black). The characters from group 2a (purple) and 2b (green) are part of the secondary group.

1. Level of compliance A includes the characters from Group 1 (or primary group) for writing in French and English, excluding the œ Œ Ÿ symbols from Group 2b, which are not supported by the ISO 8859-1 standard (in black in Figure 2).
2. Level of compliance B must include the characters from Group 2a (shown in purple in Figure 2), in addition to those from Group 1 (in black), while being limited to the characters of the ISO 8859-1 standard. Characters from Group 2b go beyond the level of compliance B of the national standard.
3. Level of compliance C corresponds to the full version (Groups 1, 2a, and 2b), allowing for the typing of every character from ISO 8859-1, extending support to all characters from ISO 6937, strictly. Level of compliance C requires a custom driver that integrates all required characters.
4. Finally, the Canadian standard had an "implicit" level of compliance that does not conform to the previous levels. In such cases, the standard states that it defaults to level A. A keyboard compliant with the ISO 8859-15 standard, for example, would require the removal of certain characters in Group 2a, such as fractions ¼½¾, in order to include the œ/Œ ligatures and the Ÿ (uppercase) from Group 2b. The ANSI version is only compliant with level A of the national standard, as the discontinuous vertical bar, part of Group 2a, is missing. In fact, only ISO keyboards can achieve level of compliance B and C.

Figure 3: CSA keyboard, level of compliance B (group 1/2a). In the Quebec Standard SGQRI-001 (2006), the Πsign is also included.

The Quebec standard SGQRI-001 also has included the ligature ⟨Œ⟩ since 2006, in addition to the characters from Group 1 and 2a, going beyond level of compliance B of the Canadian standard. The presence of this character is part of a subgroup conforming to ISO/IEC 9995-3 (secondary group). The characters in green (Group 2b in Figure 2) were not included in most keyboards and drivers, partly due to the limitation of the ISO 8859-1 encoding and the limited availability of Unicode on computers until the early 2000s.

The ring-above symbol ⟨ ˚⟩, which should not be confused with the degree sign ⟨°⟩ and the ordinal indicator ⟨º⟩, is part of Group 2b, while the characters å and Å from Swedish, produced by combining ring-above and a/A, are in Group 2a. For the macron ⟨¯⟩, the standalone character (with spacing) is part of Group 2a, but accented characters like ā/Ā are considered scholarly letters (Group 2b), which go beyond level B compliance (Groups 1/2a). These characters are present in the ISO 6937 standard but not in the ISO 8859-1 standard. Indeed, the use of this character as a diacritical mark allows writing only in a language other than the 14 officially supported languages on keyboards conforming to level B compliance (Albanian, German, English, Catalan, Danish, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Icelandic, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish). The standalone macron character is included in the ISO 8859-1 standard. In Figure 2, these two symbols (the macron and chief circle) are coloured purple, as they provide access to at least one character in Group 2a. The symbol ⟨Ÿ⟩, produced by combining diaeresis (Group 1) and Y (Group 1), is in Group 2b, while ⟨ÿ⟩ (lowercase), produced by combining diaeresis (Group 1) and ⟨y⟩ (Group 1), is in Group 1. For more details, the official document includes a detailed list of the characters from Groups 1, 2a, and 2b.

ISO 9995-3

Figure 4: ISO 9995-3:2010 (third edition), outdated secondary group The outdated secondary group is supported for the layout based on the ISO 6937 or Multilingual European Subsets 1 (MSE-1) standards.

The ISO 9995-3 standard specifies the placement of the secondary group and characters on a key (these must be aligned to the right of the primary group). The standard can serve as a reference for including a subgroup of characters in a layout that goes beyond the level of conformity described by the Canadian standard CSA Z243.200-92. Certain characters from group 2b or others not integrated into the CSA standard, such as the euro sign, can be included by referring to them as a subgroup of the ISO 9995-3 standard, in addition to the supported level of conformity.

ISO 9995-7

In Part 7 of the ISO 9995-7 standard, standardized pictograms provide neutral and efficient labeling, avoiding the need to transcribe legends in both French and English. These symbols have also, for the most part, been integrated into Unicode for several years. The symbol for selecting level 3 is represented in the ISO 9995-7 standard with two overlapping arrows, resembling a Christmas tree. The selection key for group 2 is an arrow pointing to the right (blue arrow). The government standard for the Quebec public service SGQRI-001 requires the use of standardized pictograms following the ISO 9995-7 standard or function key labelling in French only in its calls for tenders. The Canadian TBITS-5 standard also recommends this at the federal level. The CSA Z243.200-92 standard, on the other hand, does not require the use of pictograms for labelling function keys. However, the use of the pictogram for the non-breaking space bar is mentioned in the document.

The labelling of dead keys with rectangles and the soft hyphen in parentheses (-), goes beyond Canadian and Quebec standards.

• ISO 9995-7 (Basic pictograms used in the Quebec standard SGQRI 001)
• 
  1 Level 2 Selection ISO-7000 0251 (U+21E7)
• 
  3 Caps Lock ISO-7000 2011 (U+21EC)
• 
  4 Num Lock ISO-7000 2012 (U+21ED)
• 
  5 Level 3 Selection ISO-7000 2013 (U+21EE)
• 
  7 Group 2 Selection ISO-7000 0251 (U+21E8)
• 
  9 Space ISO-7000 2915 (U+2423)
• 
  10 Non-breaking space ISO-7000 2016 (U+237D)
• 
  11 Insertion ISO-7000 2017 (U+2380)
• 
  17 Backspace ISO-7000 2023 (U+232B)
• 
  18 Delete ISO-7000 1028 (U+2425)
• 
  20 Scroll Lock ISO-7000 2025 (U+21F3)
• 
  22 Print Screen ISO-7000 2027 (U+2399)
• 
  23 Return ISO-7000 0651 (U+21B5)
• 
  25 Alternative ISO-7000 2105 (U+2387)
• 
  26 Control ISO-7000 2028 (U+2388)
• 
  27 Pause IEC 417-5111 (U+2389)
• 
  28 Interruption IEC 417-5110 (U+238A)
• 
  29 Escape ISO-7000 2029 (U+238B)
• 
  31 Cursor up IEC 417-5107 (U+2191)
• 
  32 Cursor down IEC 417-5107 (U+2193)
• 
  33 Cursor left IEC 417-5107 (U+2190)
• 
  34 Cursor right IEC 417-5107 (U+2192)
• 
  39 Home ISO-7000 2031 (U+21F1)
• 
  40 End ISO-7000 2032 (U+21F2)
• 
  41 Page up ISO-7000 2033 (U+2397)
• 
  42 Page down ISO-7000 2034 (U+2398)
• 
  43 Left Tab ISO-7000 0001 (U+21E5)
• 
  44 Right Tab ISO-7000 0001 (U+2B7E)
• 
  62 Decimal separator ISO-7000 1859 (U+2396)

Notes : Number of the pictogram corresponding to the ISO 9995-7 standard, followed in order by its definition, the ISO 7000 or IEC 417 number, and the Unicode character for entering it on the computer. Some pictograms require the installation of a compatible font.

See also

• Keyboard layout
• QWERTY

External links

• "CSA Standards". Canadian Standards Association. Archived from the original on 2 November 2009. Retrieved 27 December 2009.