Euro Character Support Mini HOWTO
March 3, 2002
Ari
Mäkelä
hauva@arska.org
v1.0.2
2002-04-06
am
Added the info that emacs support is read-only and removed
the question about how the support works.
v1.0.1
2002-03-03
am
Cent: added comment that cent is not usually used. More Euro links.
Added information on KDE and Gnome.
v1.0.0
2001-09-29
am
Original release
Abstract
This document describes how to make the Euro character support in
GNU/Linux work. Finnish users might be interested to consult the Finnish
HOWTO which is written in Finnish.
Copyright and Thanks
The document is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License
, version 1.1.
Thanks for numerous people who gave me advice in Usenet.
The Euro Character
The new character set, ISO-8859-15 which is also known
as latin9 and in order
to maximize confusion as latin0, was created to
replace ISO-8859-1 (latin1)
and it includes the euro character.
The Euro is mapped to AltGr-e and the cent
- if it is used - is mapped
to AltGr-Shift-e in X and on AltGr-c on console.
The Euro Mini HOWTO was written on a Debian system and the set up
works on Debian 3.0 (Debian testing as the time of writing).
The Euro and Locales
glibc 2.2 and newer support the Euro. The correct locale
is, for example, fi_FI@euro.
The Euro and the Console
Check that the file /usr/share/keymaps/include/euro.inc.gz includes lines
altgr keycode 18 = currency
altgr keycode 46 = cent
A console font, which suppports euro, must be loaded. Red Hat uses
command setfont and Debian uses command consolechars.
In Debian the file /etc/console-tools/config must have ISO-8859-15
screen font:
SCREEN_FONT=lat0-16
In Red Hat the file /etc/sysconfig/i18n must have lines
SYSFONT=lat0-16
SYSFONTACM=iso15
The Euro in the X Window System
With default configuration AltGr-e (the right
Alt for those who have
no AltGr) produces the generic currency symbol which looks like a four
legged spider. When the font of the program is changed to a
ISO-8859-15 font the currency symbol is replaced by
the Euro symbol. In Debian
this can be achieved by adding line
.XTerm.VT100.font: -jmk-neep alt-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-15
to the file /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm. The fonts
available in distributions and installations vary.
If AltGr-e does not work add line
keycode 26 = e E EuroSign
to the file /etc/X11/Xmodmap
KDE
Change the font setting in KControl to ISO-8859-15.
GTK and Gnome
Change the font setting in Gnome Control Center to ISO-8859-15.
A better way of doing this is changing the system wide GTK+ configuration
with commands
cd /etc/gtk
ln -s gtkrc.iso-8859-15 gtkrc
Emacs
Emacsen 21 and newer have partial euro support. The following elisp
should work:
(set-face-font
'default '"-*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-15")
Note that you cannot write Euro characters. You can only see them.
Euro-links
KWord Euro Page
.
Debian Euro HOWTO
.
Euro Character Support mini HOWTO
Guylhem Aznar's Euro Pack
The README of the Euro Pack
Linux Journal on the Euro Pack