🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <52702@sun.uucp> glennw%noddy@Sun.COM (Glenn P. Wright) wrote:
>One key feature of 8859 is that it includes 7-bit US ASCII 
>representation in the bottom half of each and every subset of the standard. 

To this, Fridrik Skulason (frisk@rhi.uucp, University of Iceland) replied:
>Not every subset - at least one has the international currency sign instead
>of the dollar sign at position 24.

I have to disagree with Fridrik's reply: each and every part of ISO 8859 has
the DOLLAR SIGN in code position 2/4: it is an overriding design feature of
these code tables.  (I sit on the relevant ISO committee.) 

While ISO 646 and 4873 (7-bit and 8-bit code structure standards) permit the
option of 2/4 being GENERAL CURRENCY SIGN, ISO 8859 provides DOES NOT provide
this option.  The only ISO 8-bit code that I am aware of which has GENERAL
CURRENCY SIGN in 2/4 is ISO 6937-2, used primarily for CCITT Telematic
services.   (There is also some talk on changing that lone exception within the
committee.) 

----Timothy Lasko, Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, Mass., USA
----lasko@video.DEC.COM    decvax!video.dec.com!lasko   lasko%video.dec@decwrl