euro(5)euro(5)NAME
euro, Euro, EUR - Euro currency sign
DESCRIPTION
The Euro currency is the new currency for European countries belonging
to the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Euro currency was introduced
in 1999. By January 2002, the new currency is scheduled to replace
local currencies for most EMU member countries.
The Euro currency has its own euro currency sign, which looks like an
equal sign (=) superimposed on the capital letter C. Several character
sets have been updated or invented to include the euro character. Among
these are: Unicode Version 2.1 or later. The euro currency sign was not
defined in Unicode codesets prior to the Version 2.1 Unicode standard.
Implementations of Unicode encoding formats based on pre-2.1 versions
do not include the euro character. ISO/IEC 8859-15 (Latin-9) Certain
DOS and Microsoft code pages
If your character set does not support the euro character, you can
prepend the string EUR before monetary amounts in Euro currency in the
same way USD is sometimes used to specify U. S. dollars in certain
kinds of financial reports.
The following table specifies the encoding position of the euro charac‐
ter in each of these character sets:
────────────────────────────────────────────
Character Set Euro Position
────────────────────────────────────────────
Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646) U+20AC
ISO/IEC 8859-15 (Latin-9) 0xA4
GB18030 (Chinese Standard) 0xa2e3
CP1250 (Windows Latin-2) 0x80
CP1251 (Windows Cyrillic) 0x88
CP1252 (Windows Latin-1) 0x80
CP1253 (Windows Greek) 0x80
CP1254 (Windows Turkish) 0x80
CP1255 (Windows Hebrew) 0x80
CP1256 (Windows Arabic) 0x80
CP1257 (Windows Baltic) 0x80
CP1258 (Windows Vietnamese) 0x80
CP874 (DOS Thai) 0x80
────────────────────────────────────────────
Locales That Support the Euro Character
Tru64 UNIX locales that support the euro character use either the UTF-8
or ISO 8859-15 codeset. The following table lists these locales by lan‐
guage and country: ca_ES.UTF-8, ca_ES.ISO8859-15 zh_CN.UTF-8
zh_HK.UTF-8 zh_TW.UTF-8 cs_CZ.UTF-8 da_DK.UTF-8, da_DK.ISO8859-15
nl_NL.UTF-8, nl_NL.ISO8859-15 en_GB.UTF-8, en_GB.ISO8859-15
en_EU.UTF-8@euro (This is a special-purpose locale that is explained
following the list.) en_US.UTF-8, en_US.UTF-8@euro, en_US.ISO8859-15
fi_FI.UTF-8, fi_FI.ISO8859-15 nl_BE.UTF-8, nl_BE.ISO8859-15
fr_BE.UTF-8, fr_BE.ISO8859-15 fr_CA.UTF-8, fr_CA.ISO8859-15
fr_FR.UTF-8, fr_FR.ISO8859-15 fr_CH.UTF-8, fr_CH.ISO8859-15
de_DE.UTF-8, de_DE.ISO8859-15 de_CH.UTF-8, de_CH.ISO8859-15 el_GR.UTF-8
hu_HU.UTF-8 is_IS.UTF-8, is_IS.ISO8859-15 it_IT.UTF-8, it_IT.ISO8859-15
ja_JP.UTF-8 ko_KR.UTF-8 li_LT.UTF-8 no_NO.UTF-8, no_NO.ISO8859-15
pl_PL.UTF-8 pt_PT.UTF-8, pt_PT.ISO8859-15 ru_RU.UTF-8 sk_SK.UTF-8
sl_SI.UTF-8 es_ES.UTF-8, ds_ES.ISO8859-15 sv_SE.UTF-8, sv_SE.ISO8859-15
tr_TR.UTF-8
From the Options menu of the Login window, CDE users can choose locales
by using the Language menu and choosing languages whose names are fol‐
lowed by “(Unicode).” Alternatively, users can set the LANG environment
variable to one of the locales in a terminal emulation window. The
Latin-9 locales can be set in a terminal emulation window. When set in
a terminal emulation window, the locale setting applies to child appli‐
cations subsequently invoked from that window.
The @euro locale variants provide LC_MONETARY definitions for the euro
character and are intended for assignment specifically to the LC_MONE‐
TARY locale variable. In these locales, the local currency sign is
defined to be the euro character and the international currency sign is
defined to be EUR. In addition, the LC_MONETARY definition is set to
the euro character for the and locales of the languages that have fully
adopted the euro; see l10n_intro(5). Because the euro character is not
in the Latin-1 character repertoire, the (Latin-1) locales for these
languages continue to use the pre-euro local currency; lira in Italian,
for example.
The en_US.UTF-8@euro locale defines the radix point to be the period
(.) and the thousands separator to be the comma (,). The
en_EU.UTF-8@euro locale reverses these character assignments; the radix
point is a comma (,) and the thousands separator is a period (.).
Because en_EU.UTF-8@euro is intended for assignment only to LC_MONE‐
TARY, the locale is useful for languages other than English. For exam‐
ple, support for the euro character in Poland can be obtained by set‐
ting LANG to pl_PL.UTF-8 and LC_MONETARY to en_EU.UTF-8@euro.
Note
The LC_ALL environment variable overrides settings of all locale cate‐
gory variables, such as LC_MONETARY. When setting LC_MONETARY to be
different from settings for the remainder of locale categories, be sure
to use the LANG, not the LC_ALL, environment variable.
Applications that currently assume that 1 character of data is repre‐
sented by 1 byte of data in file code can more easily support the euro
character by running in a locale rather than a locale. Because UTF-8 is
basically a multibyte character encoding format, programmers cannot
assume that 1 character is equal to 1 byte of input data. To run in a
locale, applications should use functions that handle multibyte and
wide-character data rather than older functions that operate only on
single-byte characters. See Writing Software for the International Mar‐
ket for more information on this topic. See Unicode(5)for more informa‐
tion about UTF-8 encoding formats.
Codeset Converters That Support the Euro Character
Codeset converters are available to convert data between encoding for‐
mats that support the euro character. Codeset converters can convert
file data between the following formats: Unicode encoding formats and
the 874 and 125* code pages Unicode encoding formats and ISO 8859-15
(Latin-9)
For more information about these codeset converters, see
iconv_intro(5), Unicode(5), code_page(5), and iso8859-15(5).
Keyboard Entry of the Euro Character
Depending on locale setting and keyboard style, you can use particular
key sequences to enter the euro character.
When using a or locale and a keyboard that supports the Compose-charac‐
ter entry method, you can use the Compose key input method to enter the
euro character. For Compose-key input, you press and release certain
keys in sequence, starting with the key defined as the Compose key. For
the euro character, use one of the following two sequences: Compose C =
Compose = C
Left Compose+E is the most efficient key sequence for entering the euro
character on VT-style keyboards in all languages that support the euro
(except for the United Kingdom). In the United Kingdom, the VT-style
keyboard sequence is Left Compose+4.
Right Alt+E is the most efficient key sequence for entering the euro
character on PC-style keyboards in all languages that support the euro
(except for the United Kingdom). In the United Kingdom, the PC-style
keyboard sequence is Right Alt+4.
The key sequences are supported only by xkb format keymaps (which are
the default for CDE users). When using these key sequences, you hold
down the first key while pressing the other.
See keyboard(5) for more information about keyboards, keymaps, and
character entry modes.
Font Support for the Euro Character
The operating system does not provide native Unicode fonts that include
glyphs for the euro character. However, the character is supported by a
set of Latin-9 fonts. The X font library has been extended to combine a
number of fonts together to provide logical Unicode fonts for applica‐
tions to use. The names of these logical fonts end with ISO10646-1.
You can use the xlsfonts utility to find out if these fonts are
installed on your system.
Printer Support for the Euro Character
Printing of file data in UTF-8 or Latin-9 format is supported by a
generic PostScript print filter. See wwpsof(8) for information on how
to configure this print filter.
SEE ALSO
Commands: xlsfonts(1X), wwpsof(8)
Others: code_page(5), i18n_intro(5), i18n_printing(5), iconv_intro(5),
iso8859-15(5), keyboard(5), l10n_intro(5), Unicode(5)
Writing Software for the International Market
Using International Software
euro(5)