Euro Currency Support in the Solaris Operating Environment

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.