http://www.livejournal.com/users/gwalla/39856.html is a page about (and a link to) a truly excellent Windows keyboard driver that provides full access to the Latin-1 range but is completely compatible with the US-ASCII keyboard except for AltGr (the right Alt key). All non-ASCII characters and dead keys are available there: for example, to get �, one types AltGr-` followed by a.
[Alain] My two cents:
It would have been nice if this keyboard would have been based (for its second layout) on ISO/IEC 9995-3 International Standard. The latter is based on the following philosophy:
-Group 1 is the national (or prefered layout) [in the USA that would be the standard US keyboard; in this case AltGr could be added to show exactly what � qwalla � documented in his first figure (it is obvioulsy what he prefers). Group 1 normally corresponds to unshifted, shifted and AlGr layouts (3 levels, called level 1, 2, and 3)
-Group 2 is a supplementary group whose purpose is to supplement national usage for the Latin script, based on the ISO/IEC 6937 repertoire (roughly 330 Latin characters), for European languages using the Latin script. Subsets can be implemented [I would friendly recommend that � qwalla � slightly modify his figure 2 layout to fit with this international standard]. Group 2 needs a group select mechanism, which is so far left to implementation (it could be AltGr and AltGr+Shift to access the two levels described in this group in ISO/IEC 9995-3 -- however in this case that would not be sufficient for some keys of the Canadian Standard keyboard -- in at least one case we have 5 characters on the same key, see below how we do that).
Canada included ISO/IEC 9995-3's group 2 in its Canadian Standard CAN/CSA Z243.200 (implemented as "Canadian mutilingual keyboard" in several versions of Windows -- and Win XP fully implements all the characters of the ISO/IEC 6937 repertoire, with Unicode encoding [keyboard layout standards are based on abstract characters, not on coding] ; all Macs sold in Canada with French language support provide this layout as their standard layout). Group 1 is of course our national standard layer. Most Canadian implementations on PCs dedicated the scan code used on US keyboards for the RightCtrl rather as a Group Select key to access Group 2 (which can be shifted itself to get access to Group 2 Level 2 characters [so up to 3 levels in group 1 if you have followed and up to 2 levels in group 2).
Here is an example of commercial keyboard implementing the Canadian Standard keyboard with Group 2 limited to Latin 1 access (level conformance B -- full set is level conformance C [330 characters]):
http://pages.videotron.com/alb/Z243200.jpg
See also another older commercial implementation (with blue color to distinguish group 2 [levels 1 and 2] and red to distinguish group 1 level 3):
http://pages.videotron.com/alb/Z243200c.jpg
There is a joint Canada/Sweden project to present a new work item proposal at ISO to standardize (or offer guidelines) group selection mechanism (this has been tried in 1991, but that failed). With UNICODE/UCS now of age, this in our opinion would be highly desirable to go beyond international standardization of the Latin script support limited to some languages as now. If others are interested, please let me know, I convene ISO/IEC JTC1/SC35/WG1, which is responsible for keyboard international standardization. Our next meeting will be in November, most likely in Stockholm (fallback: Paris). In the meanwhile someone can also implement ISO/IEC 14755 (poor man's input method to enter UCS character with the help of any keyboard), a standard made in the mid 1990s (it is not a keyboard standard but could be useful for limited usage of "special" characters).
John, could you please forward this to Livejournal, I do not subscribe to such online forums (I prefer email reflectors, due to a lack of time).
Alain LaBont� Qu�bec
