Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!dkuug!dkuugin!keld From: keld@login.dkuug.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen) Newsgroups: comp.std.internat Subject: Re: Latin-1 and the French language Message-ID: Date: 4 Feb 91 17:12:40 GMT References: <728@castor.linkoping.telesoft.se> Sender: news@slyrf.dkuug.dk Lines: 35 enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) writes: >In article <728@castor.linkoping.telesoft.se> ath@linkoping.telesoft.se (Anders Thulin) writes: >> It was recently remarked in comp.text that ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) does >> not cover the major Western languages. As an example, it was noted >> that the French letter (ligature of o and e) was not included >> in any of the Latin-n tables. The story as I know it is that the was not deemed nessecary for the French language by AFNOR when ISO 8859-1 was in the works and accepted. Later AFNOR changed its opinion, and has proposed that ISO 8859-1 was changed to include the and other interesting stuff, at the expense of the Icelandic letters eth and thorn. This was voted down in SC2. Now AFNOR is proposing a new ISO 8859 part covering "EEC" - with the - we will se what happens to that. >> I am trying to find out the reason for this apparent oversight. >While you're at it, can you try to find out what the hell the >multiplication and division signs are doing in the middle of the >accented characters, too? The multiplication and division signs were put there as the space would otherwise be empty, and to avoid all kinds of incompatibilities with vendors and the like assigning different characters to these positions, SC2 placed these symbols there. >> Is an indispensable character in French? Obviously the French have different opinions about this. As I learnt it in school however, oeuf and boeuf was always spelled with the letter/ligature. I am no Frenchman though. Keld Simonsen