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From: lasko@regent.dec.com (Tim Lasko, Digital Equipment Corp., Westford, MA)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: Latin-1 and the French language
Message-ID: <19767@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 4 Feb 91 15:24:50 GMT
Sender: newsdaemon@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 30


Why no "oe" in ISO 8859-1:

It was the opinion of a majority of the members of the ISO working group that
developed ISO 8859-1, supported by a majority of the voting members of the
parent subcommittee, including the French national body, that "oe" and "OE"
were not characters but ligatures only of interest in typography.  Similarly,
other ligatures are also not included.  Capital Y with dieresis was removed
from the list because of its rarity. This left two holes in the code table that
were later filled with the multiplication and division sign--only a compromise
from the dozen-or-so characters that had been considered--to avoid
vendor-specific implementations of ISO 8859-1.

Of course, expert opinion can change. The French member body changed its mind
less than a year after publication of ISO 8859-1 and among the consequences is
one new proposed code table tentatively titled ISO Latin Alphabet No 7, based
on an AFNOR draft--possibly approved by now--standard covering the "Languages
of the EEC written using the Latin script".  And so it goes.

[I have had the privilege of sitting on the U.S. and ISO committees that
developed ISO 8859-1, although I joined late in its development.  It is an
interesting balance of compromise and technical effort.  The discussion on
comp.text has filtered into a number of other lists and while I did not see
that discussion, I can only point out that ISO 8859-1 was not intended to cover
*all* of the Western European languages. You just simply cannot do that in 191
character positions and include all of the lesser-used and minority languages. 
Welsh is an oft-cited oversight.]

Tim Lasko, Digital Equipment Corp., Westford MA  (lasko@regent.enet.dec.com)
Disclaimer: My opinions are my own; the facts can speak for themselves.