Re: Euro sign now added to CP850 and CP857

From: Lisa Moore (lisam@us.ibm.com)
Date: Fri Aug 14 1998 - 12:16:42 EDT


Hold on to your hats (or something!), IBM has indeed changed code page 850.
But we have also created a new code page which is 858 (850 with the dotless i,
0xD5, replaced by euro). The OS/2 platform wants to stick to using 850, but
some of our middleware products want to have the new code page to help maintain
data integrity. 857 is still 857 because adding the euro did not replace an
existing character.

It's a brave new world,

Lisa

fdc@watsun.cc.columbia.edu on 08-14-98 07:11:56 AM
Please respond to unicode@unicode.org
To: unicode@unicode.org
cc:
Subject: Re: Euro sign now added to CP850 and CP857

> According to
>
> http://ps.boulder.ibm.com/pbin-usa-ps/getobj.pl?/pdocs-usa/euro.html
>
> IBM has changed code pages 850 and 857 to include the euro sign.
>
> Therefore I suggest to update in the mapping files
>
> ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MICSFT/PC/CP850.TXT
> ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MICSFT/PC/CP857.TXT
>
> the lines
>
> 0xd5 0x0131 #LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I
> 0xd5 #UNDEFINED
>
> which should both be replaced by
>
> 0xd5 0x20AC #EURO SIGN
>
> and the equivalent change should be made in CP857.TXT.
>
Not necessarily. I believe what it means to say (but doesn't) about CP850
is that a new code page, CP858, was created by copying CP850 and replacing
dotless i with the Euro symbol. I don't think IBM has ever changed, or will
ever change, the definition of a code page.

Similarly for CP857, but I don't know the CP number of its Euro twin.

CP923 is identical to ISO 8859-15. CP924 has the same repertoire as CP923
but with EBCDIC encoding. Other EBCDIC code page replacements include:

Current New Code Countries
   37 1140 9F USA, Canada, Netherlands, Portugal, Brazil, Australia, NZ
  273 1141 9F Austria, Germany
  277 1142 5A Denmark, Norway
  278 1143 5A Finland, Sweden
  280 1144 9F Italy
  284 1145 9F Spain, Latin America (Spanish)
  285 1146 9F UK
  297 1147 9F France
  500 1148 9F Belgium, Canada, Switzerland
  871 1149 9F Iceland

("Code" is the hex code point of the Euro symbol).

This according to documentation shipped by IBM with OS/2 Fix Paks. I'm
sure the info can also be found somewhere in the maze of IBM web pages.

- Frank



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