Last updated: 22 October 1997

IT aspects of the euro currency sign

Introduction

The euro is the European Union currency that should be introduced from the 1 January 1999. For details, including the official euro glyph, look at http://europa.eu.int/euro/. This document discusses aspects related to the euro currency sign and IT (information technology).

7 and 8 bits

Today, most computer systems use 7 and 8 bits character sets. For the euro, one has to re-adapt present computer systems and facilitate the introduction of new computer systems in the most economical way. Whenever possible, it is strongly recommended to use Unicode as 7 and 8 bits character sets should be considered in the way out. But these legacy systems will be here for a long while.

Two new character sets are proposed:

euro-ASCII: The same as ASCII (ISO 646), but replacing the position VERTICAL LINE (U+007C) by the EURO SIGN (U+20AC). Another name for this character set could be ESCII.
euro-Latin1: The same as Latin1 (ISO 8859-1), but replacing the position VERTICAL LINE (U+007C) by the EURO SIGN (U+20AC).

i.e,

Table	Position number	Glyph	Name
ASCII and Latin1	7C	\|	VERTICAL LINE
euro-ASCII and euro-Latin1	7C		EURO SIGN

From an informal point of view, it could be regarded as replacing one glyph in the ASCII table.
Easy to re-use present equipment.
Easy to implement in new equipment.
If the euro glyph is not present, the only side effect is that the "|" will be printed.
Present in the qwerty and other keyboards.
Users with the non-euro keyboards, will press the key corresponding to the "|".
In the new keyboards lay-out with the "|", the euro should be placed on the same position.
The "|" is little used by end users.
The "|" is mostly used by programmers (Unix pipe, and OR), but replacing the glyph will not affect the programs.

Next step: registering the tables.

Unicode

There is a nearly completed proposition to have in Unicode:

Unicode position	Glyph	Name
U+20AC		EURO SIGN

To verify the status check Proposed Unicode Characters at http://www.unicode.org/unicode/alloc/Pipeline.html.

Warning : The following position in Unicode Version 2.0 is for the ecu and not the euro, even if the word euro is part of description.

Unicode position	Glyph	Name
U+20A0	CE	EURO-CURRENCY SIGN

In the glyph "CE" both characters are interlaced with the E lower.

HTML entity

One new entity is proposed for the euro in HTML:

€

It is recommended that this entity be used in preference to the 7 or 8 bits code corresponding to the position of the euro. This will make the intention clearer.

The euro could be also be refered using the decimal value of the Unicode position U+20AC :

€

If the browser cannot process:

€ it would display euro in place of .
€ it would probably display ? in place of .

Next step: Through W3C.

Glyph registration

For ISO 10036 work in progress.

Currency code

For ISO 4217 "EUR" has been registered.

Windows

Microsoft will support the euro. The information is at http://www.microsoft.com/typography/faq/faq12.htm.

Publicity

There must be publicity focused on the IT vendors on the approved euro glyph, the positions in 7 bits, 8 bits and Unicode. Otherwise the computer equipment needed would not be available with the correct glyph: if a programmer in San Jose were requested to introduce the euro currency sign, he would probably consult the Unicode book and copy the wrong "CE" glyph.

References

IT aspects of the euro currency sign: This document
http://www.crpht.lu/~carrasco/winter/euro.html
Year 2000 and the Euro: IT challenges of the century: CORDIS (Community Research and Development Information Service)
http://www.cordis.lu/esprit/src/y2keuro.htm
EURO standardisation issues - History - Status: http://www.stri.is/TC304/EURO/
The Euro and Standardization: http://www.indigo.ie/egt/standards/iso10646/euro/
Unicode: http://www.unicode.org/
W3C: http://www.w3.org/
AFII: Association for Font Information Interchange
http://www/rit/edu/~afii/

Author

M.T. Carrasco Benitez
http://www.crpht.lu/~carrasco/

Comments to manuel.carrasco@emea.eudra.org.

Disclaimer: This document represent only the views of the author.