test

Euro Currency Support in the Solaris Operating Environment

2.3 Input and Output Support

Input and output support information is detailed below for keyboards, fonts, and codeset conversion.

2.3.1 Keyboard Support

In April 1998, the European Commission (EC) recommendations on the euro currency symbol keyboard location referred to the three main functional levels in keyboard standards:

The European Commission (EC) proposed a short-term and long-term solution. The short-term solution was to place the euro currency symbol on the "E" key at Level 3. Here, the euro is generated by pressing two keys: AltGraph+e. The EC also recommended that the symbol be engraved on the keytop, which is common practice for many Level 3 characters on European keyboards (for example, German).

The short-term solution was chosen because it can be implemented easily on most national keyboards and is ergonomically sound. The key combination is also easy to remember, since "e" can be associated with "euro". Some countries (United Kingdom and Ireland), however, already use AltGraph+e to produce the "è" character. The EC has offered some alternative solutions for these countries. One alternative is to place the euro currency symbol at Level 3 on Keys "3" or "4", both of which already contain currency signs at Level 2 on most keyboards.

The long-term proposal is to introduce a new euro currency-symbol key on future keyboards. This new key would be in a common position at Level 1 for all countries.

2.3.1.1 Sun Keyboard Strategy

Sun has adopted the short-term proposal for the euro currency symbol keyboard location. The euro will be placed at Level 3 and will be generated by pressing AltGraph+e. For national keyboards with contentions (United Kingdom, Ireland, U.S. International), the euro will also be placed at level 3 but will be generated by pressing AltGraph+4. On U.S. International keyboards, the euro can also be generated by pressing AltGraph+5 or AltGraph+e. On keyboards in the United Kingdom, the euro can also be generated by pressing AltGraph+e. The following table summarizes the euro currency symbol location on Sun Type 6 keyboards.

Table 2-2 Euro currency symbol location on Sun Type 6 Keyboards

Type 6 Keyboard 

EU Member 

Location 

U.S. 

No 

AltGraph+4

UNIX 

No 

AltGraph+e

UNIX/Logoless 

No 

AltGraph+e

French 

Yes 

AltGraph+e

Danish 

Yes 

AltGraph+e

Italian 

Yes 

AltGraph+e

Netherlands/Dutch 

Yes 

AltGraph+e

Norwegian 

No 

AltGraph+e

Portuguese 

Yes 

AltGraph+e

Spanish 

Yes 

AltGraph+e

Swedish 

Yes 

AltGraph+e

Finnish 

Yes 

AltGraph+e

Swiss/French 

No 

AltGraph+e

Swiss/German 

No 

AltGraph+e

UK 

Yes 

AltGraph+4

Ireland 

Yes 

AltGraph+4

2.3.1.2 Keyboard Input in UTF-8 Locales

Sun also provides two additional methods to input the euro:

In the Unicode Hexadecimal input method, the user generates the euro currency symbol by typing the Unicode value for the symbol (U+20AC).

In the table lookup method, the user presses Compose+Control+L, which lists the possible scripts. Choose "Latin" and then the euro from the character table.

2.3.2 Font Support

The following fonts have been added to the Solaris operating environment to allow the euro to display and print:

monotype-arial-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-arial-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-arial-regular-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-arial-regular-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-courier-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-courier-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-courier-regular-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-courier-regular-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-times-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-times-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-times-regular-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-times-regular-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
Note -

For Asian locales, euro support is Asian UTF-8 locales only.

There are no additional tasks to access the new euro fonts. For information on accessing fonts in X, refer to the X Window System User's Guide.

2.3.3 Printer Support

The Solaris operating environment does not assume that printers have the correct installed fonts. System fonts are downloaded to the printer with the document. Euro fonts will also be downloaded to the printer when printing documents in the ISO 8859-15 or UTF-8 locales.

2.3.4 Codeset Conversion

Codeset conversion support for roundtrip conversion between ISO 8859-15 and UTF-8 using new iconv(1) modules has been added to the Solaris operating environment. Users can access these modules via the iconv(1) command. Developers can access these modules via the iconv(3) function. The Common Deskset Environment (CDE) dtmail utility has also been modified to ensure that outgoing e-mail based on ISO 8859-15 is tagged accordingly. Support has also been added in dtmail to ensure appropriate codeset conversion of incoming ISO 8859-15, MIME-compliant e-mail. Codeset conversion applies only if dtmail is running in a UTF-8 locale.