# Canadian mac laptop keyboard layout



## Barryaustralia (Mar 24, 2008)

Hi,

I'm in Australia, where you can only buy the bland US style keyboard on an apple laptop. 

I was searching around for the possibility to be able to type French & German letters without having to fiddle with the option key. I note on wikipedia that in Canada there is a groovy keyboard layout (as a QWERTY style keyboard) known as "Canadian Multilingual standard":
Keyboard layout - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This appears to be the equivalent of Canadian CSA in the International keyboard layout prefernces in OSX 10.3.9, by my testing that preference setting out. 


Wikipedia also lists a slightly different keyboard layout called "Canadian French" - this appears not to have the umlaut on the ^ key.
Keyboard layout - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


My question is, 
When purchasing a laptop from Apple Canada store online, and I'd like the Canadian Multilingual Standard (or Canadian CSA - I assume?) keyboard with ENGLISH as my OS language, 

do I choose:
US English or
French Canadian 

as the keyboard layout here:
The Apple Store (Canada)


The Apple site doesn't allow you to email such questions to them.

Thanks in advance & regards
Barry, Australia


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## Oldbob (Feb 17, 2008)

Barry, I'm french Canadian and I have a iMac (intel) and and old iBook clamshell (first generation) . My iBook came from the US so it's an US keyboard. 
When I use my iBook (US keyboard) I set my system preferences so that the Canadian - CSA is activated. All french caracters are available and you get use to it in a few minutes.
So i guess it's just a matter of adjusting your system preferences (language).

Hope this helps,

Bob


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

Barry, this won't answer your question - sorry - but having worked in English / Spanish / French and a few other languages over the years, I find the Option-key accents, etc., to be very easy to remember.

Here's a page outlining all accent codes

M


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## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

Hello,

Being French and using both PC and Macs with US keyboards, I'm now used to the US International layout. In this layout, to type ï for instance requires to first type " and then i (I think they call this dead keys), and I got used to it quite easily.

You can find a Mac OS X version of this layout here:
Rainer Brockerhoff :: USInternational


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