Re: Euro

From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Mon Oct 20 1997 - 13:53:49 EDT


Tomas,

I have explained this in detail to the list at least twice--
once several months ago, and once again my posting dated
Thursday, Oct 16, titled "Re: Euro - re-statement." Please
refer to that posting before badgering this list for more
answers.

> There is some kind of confussion. In the book "The Unicode
> Standard, Version 2.0" is the following:
>
> 20A0 CE EURO-CURRENCY SIGN
>
> in the glyph CE the characters are interlaced and the E is lower.
> I do *not* want to add any character, just Unicode to indicate that
> the correct glyph is the "E" with the parallel middle "=" (have a look
> to http://europa.eu.int/euro.html).

Unicode has already standardized:

   U+20AC EURO SIGN

as the encoding for the Euro currency (= EUR).

>
> I first notice this in Sep96 in San Jose when the book was released and
> I commented on it.
>
> It is reasonable to assume that the position 20A0 is for the EURO and
> not
> for the ECU according the name given.

This is no longer tenable, as it has been stated I don't know how many
times that U+20A0 is not to be used for the Euro.

>
> Question: does position 20A0 for the ECU or EURO ?

Neither. See my contribution noted above, as well as Michael Everson's
replies. U+20A0 may have been used by some as a symbol for the Ecu, but
the glyph shown was never adopted as an official symbol for the Ecu. It
is assuredly not for the Euro.

>
> Because if the position 20A0 if for the ECU, this is really confusing.

Confusing if you depend only on the name of U+20A0. But the implementers
are not confused, are using U+20AC correctly -- and the confusion will be
eliminated by clear text stating the correct usage in the next edition
of the Unicode Standard, which will show the correct glyph explicitly at
U+20AC for the EURO SIGN.

Regards,

--Ken Whistler



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:37 EDT