From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Mon Jul 07 2003 - 16:50:28 EDT
On Monday, July 07, 2003 9:41 PM, Michael Everson <everson@evertype.com> wrote:
> At 15:03 -0400 2003-07-07, Tex Texin wrote:
>
> > When is a character properly called a currency sign?
>
> Hunh? When you use it to represent currency. DM was two characters
> used as a character sign in Germany.
As well as now the "EUR" international currency code, usable also
as a symbol when the Euro sign is not available.
Same thing for "JPY" (Japanese Yen), "USD" (US Dollar), "GBP" (British
Sterling Pound), "BRR" (Brasilian Real), "THB" (Thai Bath), or "XEU"
(the past European Currency Unit replaced by the Euro in a different
area of countries excluding GB and DK, but including four non EU
member countries: AD, MC, SM, VA, which were previously not in
the ECU "basket")...
The old symbol for the Italian Lira or the Turkish Pound is a handscripted
lowercase L, which is not strictly a currency sign.
Unlike the old Peseta symbol, or the French Franc symbol (this one was
rarely used at least with the "representative" glyph: on old French
typesetters a narrow and kerned "Fr" abbreviation was printed on the key
that is now used for the Superscript 2 Digit (²) character on modern
computer keyboards).
-- Philippe.
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