🚀 go-pugleaf

Rob Wilcox wrote:
> 
>   The 'European' this week describes it as being:
> 
>    "...shaped like a post modern pretzel, borrows the rounded
>     'e' from the EU's own symbol. The twin cross-bars are a
>     deliberate allusion to the logos representing the US
>     Dollar and the Japanese Yen ... ".
> 
>   Not to mention the Pound Sterling .....

Indeed - standard daisywheel pound sign is L<bckspce>= - in fact 
pound signs are stylised Ls with lines through them.


> Inevitably, it is currently being shown as a graphic, since
> as yet there is no ASCII value assigned to the symbol, let
> alone properly crafted font designs.
>
> Does anyone know if an international ASCII value has been
> assigned ?

I assume this is really a problem for ISO - it'll be some 
variant of an ISO-Latin font.  You can't expect Americans to get 
it right - they still think that a pound sign symbol (in ASCII) 
is two vertical bars crossing two horizontal bars, presumably 
because (a) UK PC keyboards have the pound sign where you get 
the hash on a US one and (b) putting printers into 'English' 
mode makes hash symbols turn into pound signs...

It's not such a huge problem for PS printers, because they give 
all the characters names, and then define mappings between 8 bit 
numbers and characters, so all that's required is for a new 
glyph name to be assigned.  It's windows that worries me.  
(Specifically and generally.)


> Irrespective of whether or not the UK eventually joins the
> currency we will still need to refer to it, just as we often
> refer to the 'US$';

Clearly.  I assume nobody round here sends out invoices with 
'UKP' on instead of a pound sign.  Assuming we don't get the 
complete collapse of the European monetary system when the Euro 
comes in, then regardless of whether the UK is in or out, there 
are likely to be a few people around wanting to print out euro 
signs.


> I'm not a betting man, but my guess is that we'll probably
> re-assign the so-called 'International Currency Symbol' at
> ASCII 164.

But it's so useful.  Actually I have seen it used - in strings 
where you need to indicate that a currency symbol appropriate to 
locale is to be substituted.  Can't remember where I saw it now, 
but it was definitely there.  Presumably on RiscOS, because 
Acorn produce the only machines I've ever seen where you can 
actually type the international currency symbol.


> Personally, I think the 'satellite dish' looks horrid and I
> would have preferred to have seen a florid/copperlate/swash
> kind of 'E'.

But that would be easily confused with a pound sign wouldn't it?  
Given that the top of the L is always swept across with UKP, 
then an E is going to look a bit similar.


>   No doubt the disco drug culture will soon be discussing the
> question
> 
>  " ... how many E's for an 'e'... "

I'll have an E please Bob!


> probably not so different from Thatcher's 'beer token' pound
> coin;  but sadly inflation has now dated that particular quip.
> If only ...

Yeah - you have blue, brown and purple beer tokens these days.  
And those little round half-beer (down to third-beer, depending 
on whether you're in a nightclub or not) tokens.

Not as depressing as Ford Prefect buying six pints of beer, and 
being told by the bar man:  "Keep the change?  From a fiver?", 
where the bar man wasn't meaning "Are you taking the piss or 
something?  Give us the rest!"


--
Ian Griffiths