🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> AT == ath@linkoping.telesoft.se (Anders Thulin)
>>>>> EN == enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum)
>>>>> GP == egr@contact.uucp (Gordan Palameta)

AT> It was recently remarked in comp.text that ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) does not
AT> cover the major Western languages. As an example, it was noted that the
AT> French letter <oe> (ligature of o and e) was not included in any of the
AT> Latin-n tables.

AT> I am trying to find out the reason for this apparent oversight.

GP> OE and oe were dropped from the original Latin-1 proposal (at the request
GP> of the French representative, no less, on the grounds that this is a
GP> ligature and not a separate letter).

   Never believe what experts say :-).  This is a sad story!

AT> Is <oe> an indispensable character in French? 

   Yes (I should add, IMHO, but somehow cannot :-).  Some words will use "oe"
(two separate letters), some others <oe> (the [in]famous so-called ligature).
Examples: oeil (eye), oeuf (egg), boeuf (ox), oeuvre (work, opus), coeur
(heart) all use the ligature <oe>, and must be written <oe>il, <oe>uf, b<oe>uf,
<oe>uvre, c<oe>ur, while coefficient, coercition, coexister (self-explanatory)
or boette (a kind of bait) do not use it.

   Thus this ``ligature'' is different from the "ff", "fi", "ffi" ligatures,
which are imposed by typographers as soon as the characters occur together: I
write "coefficient", and I want it to appear on paper as "coe<ffi>cient".

EN> Sigh!  If the French attempt to boycott ISO 8859-1 as the one-octet default
EN> for ISO 10646, and want their own ISO 8859-n (for some large n) why can't
EN> we just "update" ISO 8859-1 by re-inserting those OE and oe ligatures right
EN> in the middle of the other "O with random squiggle" series?

   I would second this kind of proposition, but I am afraid it is too late.

EN> I'm not impressed by this counter-productivity and random politicking.

   I do not want to comment on that.  The only thing I have to say is that I
would like to be able to use ISO 8859 to write texts in the french language,
and at the moment this is not possible with only ISO 8859-1.
-- 
					Philippe Deschamp.
Tlx: 697033F   Fax: +33 (1) 39-63-53-30   Tel: +33 (1) 39-63-58-58
Email: Philippe.Deschamp@Nuri.INRIA.Fr   ||   ...!inria!deschamp
Smail: INRIA, Rocquencourt, BP 105, 78153 Le Chesnay Cedex, France