Typography: accented letters

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3 total messages Started by Mike Urban Tue, 28 Jan 1986 20:06

#175

Author: Mike Urban
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1986 20:06

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In a discussion with some friends about the language Esperanto,
we observed that one difficulty that the language appears to
present is that it contains accented letters (in the case of
Esperanto, circumflexed consonants, which do not appear in the
ISO proposed LATIN-1 character set).  This is mostly a problem
on typewriters (which don't have a circumflex key), but it's a
problem with computers too, since the circumflex can't be used
as an overstrike character on most CRT screens, and accented
letters are separate letters which don't have their own key.
We quickly realized that this is a problem in typography that
goes beyond Esperanto.

My question is twofold:  First: in countries that have accented
letters (France, for example), how do typewriters work?  Do
they have a circumflex key (e.g., for c^ote) that doesn't move
the carriage (or typeball) or ...?  The same question for
computer keyboards.  Second: how do American-type computers (or
their owners?) approach the problem of typing foreign
characters, as for foreign-language electronic mail or
foreign-language teaching programs?  Is there a "standard"
typographic convention for ANSI keyboards when typing foreign
characters?  What is it?

While Esperanto is one language not addressed by LATIN-1, this
particular problem of typography goes beyond Esperanto; it is
not solved by an extended character set unless you issue
LATIN-1 keyboards (with a gazillion keys for all the accented
vowels, etc.) to all computer owners.  In other words, even if
there's a standard binary code for Scandinavian slashed-o, I
still don't know how to type it on my present keyboard.

Thanks in advance,

	Mike

Re: Typography: accented letters

#173

Author: Martin Minow
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1986 03:20

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Foreign-language typewriters use different approaches, depending
on the specific language.  My Swedish typewriter has separate
keys for <A">, <O">, <A-ring>, and (maybe) <U-umlaut>.  It also
has a "dead-key" for acute- and grave- accent.  Esperanto isn't
widely used, and probably had no representatives on the ISO/CBEMA
committee.  There are procedures in place for additional character
sets, so an Esperanto standard committee could create a registered
character set.

Dec's current terminals (VT200 family) have the capability of
generating and displaying both National Character Sets and
the Dec-Multinational set that is very similar to Latin-1.
The keyboard can generate all of the national letters, even
if they don't appear on the keys.  This means that I can
write Swedish on my USA keyboard, and write C programs on
a Swedish National keyboard (that lacks braces and brackets).

For the record, the above are my opinions and not an official
statement of Digital Equipment Corporation.

Martin Minow
decvax!minow

Re: Typography: accented letters

#179

Author: thomas breuel
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1986 08:29

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> In a discussion with some friends about the language Esperanto,
> we observed that one difficulty that the language appears to
> present is that it contains accented letters (in the case of
> Esperanto, circumflexed consonants, which do not appear in the
> ISO proposed LATIN-1 character set).  This is mostly a problem

I was under the impression that the circumflex in Esperanto can be
ommitted in the case of the 'u', and can be substituted for by
following a consonant with the letter 'h'.

						Thomas.

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