Re: Greek Characters Duplicated as Latin

2011/8/14 Asmus Freytag <asmusf_at_ix.netcom.com>:
> Because the micro sign was widely implemented in systems and fonts that do
> not support the full set of Greek characters, I wouldn't be surprised to
> find that there are instances where the design was adjusted to make it "fit"
> better in a Latin environment. If so, these developments likely predate
> Unicode substantially, because this use of mu was supported in older
> technology as well. I recall seeing it on typewriter keyboard (mechanical).

Don't be surprised then if you see the micro sign on all standard
French keyboards of computers (even those sold today). This is the
only Greek letter supported there.

So this is not just old mechanical typewriters (and the old mechanical
French typewriters, built by Rockwell or Olivetti, the micro sign was
not present, there was also no exponent two, but there was a "Fr"
condensed ligature symbol for the Franc currency unit, a symbol which
has not been encoded in the UCS ; the micro sign only appeared much
later, on the very first PC keyboards by IBM, in the early 1980's...)

And I still don't know why OEMs thought at one time that it would be
more important to place this symbol on a well definite key, while at
the same time omitting the much more important œ ligature (and
forgetting the support of accented capitals)...
Received on Mon Aug 15 2011 - 05:41:54 CDT