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From: dlv@cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu (Dimitri Vulis, CUNY GC Math)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: Questions about LATIN-1 (8859-1)
Message-ID: <1991Apr17.035615.23180@timessqr.gc.cuny.edu>
Date: 17 Apr 91 03:56:15 GMT
References: <1991Apr16.130422.16607@dde.dk>
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In article <1991Apr16.130422.16607@dde.dk>, ct@dde.dk (Claus Tondering) writes:
>Could somebody please answer the following questions about
>the ISO 8859-1 (LATIN-1) character set:
>
>1) What is the currency symbol used for? And who uses it?
>   (I am referring to the symbol in position 0xa4 that looks like
>   a sun with four rays emmanating from it.)
Well, I've seen a Soviet version of BASIC which used the generalized currency
symbol instead of the dollar sign to indicate string variables. :)
It wasn't in 0xA4, though...
>
>2) What are the feminine and masculine ordinal indicators used for?
>   (The symbols in position 0xaa and 0xba that look like a small
>   underlined a and o.) I believe they are used in Spanish, is that
>   true and for what purpose?
After numbers: e.g.

   a      o
10 -   12 -
This means 10th, 12th...

>3) What is the pilcrow sign used for? And who uses it?
>   (The symbol in position 0xb6 that looks like an inverted P.)
The New York Times occasionally uses it as a bullet in an itemized list.
>4) Do the Germans consider the double-s (position 0xdf) a lower-case
>   letter, or is it both upper and lower case?

>5) Why does the standard contain the diacritical marks in separate symbol
>   positions, when they are also found as parts of letters? When would
>   you, for example, want to use the cedille (character 0xb8) or the
>   umlaut (character 0xa8) on its own?
Well, a while ago I concocted a .CPI file (for MS-DOS 3.3+ & EGA/VGA), but
never got around writing keyboard drivers. My intention was to use these
characters for dead keys: you hit a certain key to get an umlaut, then you
hit, say, a to get u-umlaut, or space for just umlaut (like you can get
dead circumflex and dead grave in pure ASCII :) or something that can't
be combined with umlaut, and then the keyboard driver beeps and gets rid 
of the umlaut.
>
>Claus Tondering,         Dansk Data Elektronik A/S, Herlev, Denmark
>E-mail: ct@dde.dk
Dimitri Vulis
CUNY GC Math
DLV@CUNYVMS1.BITNET DLV@CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU