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<H3 align="left"><img src="../../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
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height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
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>The euro symbol</H3>
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<p><strong>From Mark McGrath
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</strong></p>
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<p align="right"><strong>Answered By Jay R Ashworth, Mike "Iron" Orr, Yann Vernier, Ben Okopnik, Andreas Daab
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</strong></p>
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<P><STRONG>
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Here's an interesting question that I thought you
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might take a look at. IT applies more to the Europeans
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among us but then maybe the wider community might
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benefit if it were broadened to the wider question of
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dealing with different fonts!
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</STRONG></P>
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<P><STRONG>
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How is it possible to view the euro symbol on programs
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running on linux machines, programs like netscape,
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emacs, mutt, etc., etc.,
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</STRONG></P>
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<P><STRONG>
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Thanks in advance.
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</STRONG></P>
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<P><STRONG>
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Slán,
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</STRONG></P>
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<P><STRONG>
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Mark.
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</STRONG></P>
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<blockQuote>
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Jay]
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I quoted all of that for a reason.
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)"
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height="24" width="20" align="middle">
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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This is a good one, and one that's cropping up on several of the mail
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lists in which I participate, as well. It's a multi-faceted problem.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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Using non-ASCII characters (I was going to say "on a PC", but that's
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sort of obvious) requires several things:
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</blockQuote>
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<UL>
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<li> A way to type them in.
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<li> A way to ensure that the OS you're using knows which character set
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they're in. (A character set is a mapping of bytes to glpyhs, a glyph
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being a picture of a character in a font. You can have many fonts in
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the same character set.)
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<li> The program has to be equipped to handle incoming characters in
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arbitrary character sets, and either to retrieve the mapping
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information from the OS, or be told it itself.
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<li> If the program interacts with other programs, there has to be a
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standardized way of tagging which information is in which character
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sets.
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<br>
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and finally
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<br>
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<li> A way to get them back out on the screen so you can read them.
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<br>
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</UL><blockQuote>
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Each of these is handled, in Linux, by different things, and you need
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to make sure that all the pieces are in place. Frankly, I wouldn't be
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surprised at all to see an amendement to X3.64, the ASCII standard
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(which I think is also ISO 10646), to include the Euro character.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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Actually, I'm surprised it's not there already.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Iron]
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There aren't any empty slots in ASCII. You'd have to replace something like
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the backslash or the pipe symbol, and that would wreak havoc on situations
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that don't expect these glyphs to change, like ASCII art, shell scripts and
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Windows pathnames.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Jay]
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Well, no, I think you could find some other character to replace. I
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should clarify that I really don't mean USASCII (the 7 bit character
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set), what I really mean is "the most common 8-bit extended version of
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ASCII" -- though admittedly I don't know what that is. ISO-8859-0?
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Yann]
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-1, for western europe. -2 is eastern europe. Euro variants are -15 and
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-16 respectively, I think. The replaced character is €, which is an
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ancient sun symbol that also means "currency". It has the high bit set.
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Swedish people got lucky in that some odd person decided to put that
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character on our keyboards long ago - it's at Shift+4, with $ at
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AltGr+4. However, this also means that our keys are now marked with both
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"sol" (sun in swedish) and "Euro" (AltGr+E), but in different positions,
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and either one may or may not work.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Iron]
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Although I think character 35 (# or number sign) shows up as L (pound sterling)
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on British screens and other currency symbols in other places, no?
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Jay]
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Yeah, it tends to...
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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An answer to this question of the Euro has, probably not all that
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surprisingly, been written already; it's the Euro Character Support
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miniHOWTO:
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote><BLOCKQuote>
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<A HREF="http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/mini/Euro-Char-Support"
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>http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/mini/Euro-Char-Support</A>
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</BLOCKQuote></blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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...but it's sort of weak, and may be specific to Finnish.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Iron]
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As it says, new charsets have been added to the LATIN-x series containing
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the euro symbol. Are these high-bit characters? If so, they'll have the
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usual problem with non-ASCII characters: they show up differently depending
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on which charset is loaded on the recipient's computer, and whether the program/
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console can switch charsets according to the document or portion of the
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document.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Jay]
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Yeah. But there's a pretty standard default 8-bit set these days,
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isn't there? Even if it's just "IBM Code Page 437/850".
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Yann]
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Code pages 437 and 850 are incompatible, which annoyed people here no
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end as letters in our alphabet are different in the two. The "pretty
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standard" set is Latin 1, or ISO 8859-1, which happens to coincide with
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codepage 850 quite a lot.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Jay]
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There doesn't actaully seem to be a general HOWTO on using non-ASCII
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character sets with Unix that I can find at the moment [spots
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opportunity
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)"
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height="24" width="20" align="middle">], but some of the specific ones inlclude those for
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Belarussian, Danish, Hebrew, and the Unicode one -- which is probably
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where we should all be headed anyway... though the idea of security
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holes in the <EM>character set</EM> worries me a touch...
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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Hope this helps at least a little bit; you're correct; it's a weak
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spot.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Iron]
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"ASCII" means characters 0-127, which have been standardized since the 1960s.
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(See "man ascii", also a good idea if you need to look up a character, or to
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convert decimal/hex/octal/character.) Characters 0-31 are nonprintable control
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codes, 32-127 are adequate for English and programming languages. On older
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computers, the high-bit characters (128-255) weren't avaiable because the OS
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used the bit for something else (e.g., Apple ][ used it to represent "inverse
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video character"). (Actually, I also remember reading something about the
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Apple ][ using the high bit as a strobe bit, meaning a character was received.
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It's been twenty years; my memory is faulty.)
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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To support other languages, various 8-bit charsets were introduced. The
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ISO-8859-x series ("man iso_8859_1") is the most common on UNIX. -1 (aka
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LATIN-1) covers Western Europe (Germanic/Romance languages), -2 (aka LATIN-2)
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covers Eastern Europe (Slavic languages), -3 (aka LATIN-3) covers miscellaneous
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Europe (and Esperanto
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
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height="24" width="20" align="middle"> ).
|
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</blockQuote>
|
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<blockQuote>
|
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Ben]
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<narrowed eyes behind the dark glasses> You thought I'd miss that, didn't
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you? The Revolution Never Sleeps.
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</blockQuote>
|
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<blockQuote>
|
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<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
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HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
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> [Iron]
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No, I knew you'd never miss that. You had extensive training, comrade.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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The higher-numbered series cover Cyrillic, Greek,
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Turkish, Celtic, etc. New series were added to address deficiencies in previous
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series for certain languages, and to add the Euro symbol.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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LATIN-1 is the default charset for the Linux console and xterm, following
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widespread UNIX precedent, and because it was convenient for Linus and
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most of the original Linux users.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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Codepage 850 and the like are from the DOS world, and do the same thing but in
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an incompatible way.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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Russia is in an unusual situation because a native charset, KOI8-r, competes
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with ISO-8859-5 and Codepage ???. One advantage of KOI8 is that if the high
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bit gets lost, it degenerates cleanly into readable ASCII, and can easily be
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converted back by restoring the missing bit. Unfortunately, the makers of
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ISO-8859-5 and Codepage ??? didn't think about just adopting the KOI8
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character positions. Blame it on the Cold War. Some Russian web sites have
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a switch link to switch between the four most common charsets.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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All 8-bit charsets have the disadvantage that they can display only one other
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language family + English. If you need to write in two other language families,
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you have to use ASCII for one, because the console, xterm and text documents
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cannot change charsets in mid-document.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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Unicode, being a 16-bit charset (or more), solves all these problems, but on
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Linux it hasn't reached the stage of no-brainer setup or universal support by
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all applications.
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</blockQuote>
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<!-- end 3 -->
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<!-- begin 4 -->
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<blockquote><img src="../../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif"
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height="50" width="60" alt="(!) " border="0"
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> [Andreas Daab]
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Hi!
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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No Problem with <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat</A> 7.2 and euro under console, <A HREF="http://www.kde.org/">KDE</A> and konsole.
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I"m from Germany and have to put the following settings in
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/etc/sysconfig/i18n:
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</blockQuote>
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<blockquote><pre>LANG="de_DE@euro"
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SUPPORTED="de_DE@euro:de_DE:de"
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SYSFONT="lat0-sun16"
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SYSFONTACM="iso15"
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</pre></blockquote>
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<blockQuote>
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Okay, this gives me the euro symbol on the console.
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For X and kde remember to use the iso8859-15 charset, your correct language
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and country settings. If the euro symbol works in X, set it as curreny symbol
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in KDE.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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If you wan't the euro for konsole, use unicode as fontset.
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Mozilla shows the euro, if you use the iso8859-15 charset with all fonts and
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as default character coding (Preferences/Navigator/Character Coding).
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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Hope this works for you.
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</blockQuote>
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<blockQuote>
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Andreas Daab
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</blockQuote>
|
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<!-- end 4 -->
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<H5 align="center">This page edited and maintained by the Editors
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of <I>Linux Gazette</I>
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<a href=""
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>Copyright ©</a> 2002
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<BR>Published in issue 77 of <I>Linux Gazette</I> April 2002</H5>
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