Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!philapd!ssp11!dolf
From: dolf@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (Dolf Grunbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: ASCII for national characters
Message-ID: <540@ssp11.idca.tds.philips.nl>
Date: 22 Nov 89 10:06:53 GMT
References: <472@enea.se> <2942@psivax.UUCP> <1083@mountn.dec.com>
Organization: Philips Telecommunication and Data Systems, The Netherlands
Lines: 26

In article <1083@mountn.dec.com> minow@mountn.dec.com (Martin Minow) writes:
>Another missing character is the Dutch ij ligature, which is imperfectly
>represented by y-dieresis.

The 'ij' is *not* a special character in the Dutch language. It is only a
very common sequence of two characters in our language. We have the
normal (:-) 26 letter alphabet. You can find words containing 'ij' in our
dictionaries in between ..ii.. and ..ik.., so not after the 'z' (like the
special Scandinavian character in their dictionaries) or near the 'y'.
Only our telephone company (called PTT) does not know their own alphabet
and mix the 'ij' with 'y', which is of course *very* confusing :-(, e.g.
    Meijer ... 123456
    Meyer .... 234567
    Meijers .. 345678
    Meyers ... 456789
I am aware of the fact that due to the common use of 'ij' some typewriters
and keyboards have a special key for this string of characters.
I think that the Dutch version of WordPerfect has a special character for
'ij' and this really shows nice on the output because it is (almost) as
wide as one 'm' or 'w'.

-- 
Dolf Grunbauer          Tel: +31 55 433233  Internet dolf@idca.tds.philips.nl
Philips Telecommunication and Data Systems  UUCP ....!mcvax!philapd!dolf
Dept. SSP, P.O. Box 245, 7300 AE Apeldoorn, The Netherlands
           --> Holland is only 1/6 of the Netherlands <--