Path: utzoo!dciem!nttor!contact!egr
From: egr@contact.uucp (Gordan Palameta)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: Latin-1 and the French language
Message-ID: <1991Feb7.015202.29053@contact.uucp>
Date: 7 Feb 91 01:52:02 GMT
References: <728@castor.linkoping.telesoft.se> <ENAG.91Feb4001847@holmenkollen.ifi.uio.no>
Organization: Contact Public Unix BBS. Toronto, Canada.
Lines: 22

In <ENAG.91Feb4001847@holmenkollen.ifi.uio.no> 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 <oe> (ligature of o and e) was not included
>> in any of the Latin-n tables.

>> 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?


These two things are directly related:  OE and oe were dropped from the
original Latin-1 proposal (at the request of the French representative,
no less, on the grounds that this is a ligature and not a separate letter).

Since the two empty slots had to filled, the multiplication and division signs
were finally chosen out of a number of other possible replacements...