Re: Euro currency sign

From: Mark Davis (mark_davis@taligent.com)
Date: Wed Oct 15 1997 - 18:36:07 EDT


Alain,

Are you also going to be producing clones of all the other 8859-x
standards with the Euro substituted?

Mark

Alain La Bonté - ordi3dgsig wrote:

> A 05:11 97-10-15 -0700, Harald T. Alvestrand a écrit :
> >The only reason I can see for the Euro symbol being used at all
> >is codepoint envy towards the dollar sign.
> >
> >Monetary symbols are a dumb idea; people who want to use them should
> >pay the cost and use ISO 10646 in full.
> >
> >What's the 3-letter monetary code for the Euro?
> >
> > Harald T. Alvestrand
> > monetary unit Kr (NOK)
>
> [Alain LaBonté] :
> I've signaled to Mr. Benitez that there was already a proposal under
> ballot
> for a new part of 8859 (part 15) adding the euro symbol and correcting
>
> French and Finnish repertoires (part 1 is supposed to cover these
> languages
> but it does not do it fully for reasons of historical mistakes done in
> ISO
> TC97/SC2 [currently ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2] in 1987 - this ought to be
> corrected
> for information interchage purposes between EBCDIC, ISO-8-bit and
> ISO-UCS
> models).
>
> That said, I agree with Harald that changing 7-bit-ASCII should not be
>
> done, only for pragmatic and realistic reasons.
>
> Finally it is true that in an ideal world we should avoid for banking
> operations to use anything but 3-letter codes for currency
> identification
> (I do not count, though, the number of Europeans that invent new
> 3-letter
> symbols everyday without taking any look on international standards,
> like
> GBP instead of UKP, SFR instead of CHF, and so on -- that has to be
> said
> too -- it makes believe that these are the true banking codes, while
> it has
> nothing to do with them!)
>
> However many application systems (without mentioning the end-user and
> commercial non-banking practices) are nowadays limited in Europe to
> 1-character position for presenting their current national currency.
> Changing this to 3-letter codes would only amplify the technical
> challenge
> which is already big in that applications will have to show two prices
> in
> Europe for a while, mandated by law (maybe by doubling lines on
> reports -
> changing formats would be extremely more expensive).
>
> An there are of course political issues. The EURO SIGN is, imho, there
> to
> stay, realistically too.
>
> This change to a common European currency is of course going to cost a
> lot
> of money, perhaps more than adapting applications to the year 2000
> issue.
> But this will also create jobs for a decade or maintain them (; ...
> and
> pave the way to, who knows, a global currency! We'll know how to do
> it!
> This avant-gardist experience is bold, but it is a well-meant
> political
> will by a body representing hundreds of millions people and we should
> applaude to the idea. If this can be done, what can't be done for
> peace?
>
> Alain LaBonté
> Québec





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