Input and output support information is detailed below for keyboards, fonts, and codeset conversion.
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:
Level 1: press m to produce "m".
Level 2: press Shift+m to produce "M".
Level 3: press AltGraph+a on a UK keyboard to produce "à".
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.
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 |
Sun also provides two additional methods to input the euro:
Unicode Hex and Unicode Octal input method
Table lookup method
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.
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
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.
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.
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.