Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!pprg.unm.edu!hc!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!auspex!guy From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) Newsgroups: comp.std.internat Subject: Re: Latin-2 character set Message-ID: <918@auspex.UUCP> Date: 30 Jan 89 19:20:40 GMT References: <411ed2aa.b88e@apollo.COM> Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara Lines: 47 >Sandra Martin writes that there already exist defined keystroke >sequences "that allow users to create any Latin-2 character with >an ASCII-only keyboard." No, she doesn't. What she writes is I know that such sequences exist for Latin-1, but I don't know whether anyone has defined them for Latin-2. The sequences exist for Latin-1, but they may or may not exist for Latin-2. >I'd love to hear the details -- can anyone tell me what these are? The way these "compose sequences" work - at least on the systems with which I'm familar - is that there is some key that introduces the compose sequence. You type that key (e.g., on the Sun Type 4 keyboard it's labelled "compose", on the DEC keyboards it's labelled "Compose Character") and then you type two (or possibly more) keys. Some level of {hard|firm|soft}ware recognizes this sequence and generates an ISO Latin #1, #2, etc. code from them. A couple of examples from the SunOS keyboard driver (at least on the '386i; support for Sun-3 and Sun-4 will come in a later release): r o -> "registered trademark character" a " -> "a with an umlaut" >Where do such keystroke conventions come from? I don't know. Is there a standard (*de jure* or *de facto*) for them? >Latin-2 characters are intended to handle Albanian, Czech, German, Hungarian, >Polish, Rumanian, Serbocroatian (the Latin-alphabet form, of course), Slovak, >and Slovene. So basically East Europe. For what languages are Latin-3 and Latin-4 intended? >I don't have a machine-readable listing of the 96 upper-half >characters, so I'm reluctant to do all that typing from the ISO document! Besides, many systems don't have a way of displaying text in Latin-2, so there's no guarantee that a machine-readable listing would work on her machine anyway.... She might want to post a paper-mail address so that printed copies can be sent.