N853 1998-10-12 CEN/TC 304 N853 Title: Interim Report #2 on the Euro in IT Standardization Source: Erkki Kolehmainen, CEN/TC304 Euro Project Team leader Date: 10 Oct 1998 Status: A draft presented by Wolf Arfvidson at SOGITS meeting in October, replaces N838 Action: FYI Interim Report #2 on the Euro in IT Standardization This is a cumulative report. In this version, vendor-specific information is given for illustrative purposes only. The next version of this Report (which is intended to be the final one) is due by the end of December. In this version, substantial changes to the previous version are indicated by change bars (see here on the right). 1. Euro Currency Codes, Logo and Glyph The Currency Code for the Euro for use in monetary transfers by financial institutions et al. has been registered in the three-letter form as ‘EUR’ and in the numeric form as ‘978’ with the international registration authority BSI (British Standards Institute) appointed by ISO according to standard ISO 4217. Note: This three-letter code does not follow the normal rule: the two-letter country code (‘EU’, not registerable as such although reserved) followed by the first letter in the name of the currency (which normally would be ‘E’). The Euro sign has evolved from the initial logo to also a new character. The logo is defined as a rounded E with double line for the central horizontal bar, blue with yellow background (ref: COM(97) 418fin). The logo may be downloaded from website http://europa.eu.int/euro/ . As a character, the shape of the Euro sign needs to adapt to the textual environment. For this purpose, the Euro glyph has been registered as ISO Glyph ID 8059 in the International Glyph Register, Volume 1: Alphabetic Scripts and Symbols with the international registration authority AFII (Association for Font Information Interchange) appointed by ISO according to standard ISO/IEC 10036. As the shapes of the glyphs are adapted to the respective fonts' typographic properties, they are generally narrower than the logotype shape. Proposed alternative shapes for an OCR-B Euro glyph have been developed within the Project Team and reported in a CEN/TC304 document, as discussed later. 2. Coded Character Sets 1 N853 As a character, one must be able to input the Euro sign to an IT system (using e.g. a keyboard), to process and store it, to transmit it, and to output it (to e.g. a display, printer, et al.). All these require that the sign be included in the coded character set of the IT system in question. The support for the Euro sign as a coded character in the various environments is well on its way. The inclusion of the Euro in the standardized multi-octet Universal Character Set (ISO/IEC 10646-1 AM 18, and UNICODE) has been finalised; the 16-bit code for the Euro is ‘20AC’. This is expected to be confirmed as an International Standard in February 1999. The 8-bit ISO/IEC 8859-15, “Latin 9” that includes the Euro sign has been finalised; the code for the Euro is ‘A4‘. This is expected to be confirmed as an International Standard in December 1998. In the context of “Latin-9”, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG3 also recommended (Resolution M 13.08) that the equivalent position used by the International Currency sign (ICS) be used for the assignment of the Euro sign in new graphic character set registrations or possible new standards based upon existing 8-bit standards, where the ICS is currently encoded. The revision of the 8-bit ISO/IEC 8859-7, “Latin/Greek” that is planned to include the Euro sign, was presented in the September 1998 meeting of SC2/WG3 and is about to enter the Final Committee Draft ballot stage in ISO. Other coded character set standards may be created or extended to include the Euro sign. For certain old standards (e.g. ISO 6937 and all 7-bit coded character sets), a decision not to extend has been made. The Euro sign will be included in the forthcoming Multilingual European Subsets of the 10646 (MES-1 and -2, which have been initiated by a CEN TC304 Project Team but are now subject to a CEN ISSS Workshop and will have the status of CWA) and it will be covered by the European Ordering Rules, an ENV to be produced by another CEN TC304 PT. 2.1.1. De facto and non-standard solutions There will be several industry or ‘de facto standard’ implementations (by e.g. Microsoft and IBM, for both pcs and mainframes) available shortly if not yet. These implementations, which will be described in more detail in future reports, are planned to be made available on a country-by-country basis. In line with the above SC2/WG3 recommendation on the Euro sign vis-à-vis the International Currency sign, the Swedish IT Standardization has applied for ISO registration of three code tables with the Euro sign included in this way, corresponding to the "right halves" of the ISO/EC 8859-1, -4, and -13 (aka “Latin-1”, 2 N853 “Latin-4”, and “Latin-7 - Baltic Rim"), all of which were considered needed in Sweden. The tables were registered in September 1998, and can now be referred to as ISO-IR 204, 205, and 206, respectively. For IT applications based on the present Latin schemes but needing the Euro sign, it is therefore possible to formally specify the use of such alternatives as ISO-IR 6+204, corresponding to Latin-1, etc. 2.1.2. Markup Languages The Euro sign can be referred to as ‘€’ in the HTML Version 4 specification. 2.1.3. Fallback Where the Euro sign is not available by any of the above means in the applicable coded character set or its presentation, it is recommended that, if possible, i.e. when there is room for expansion, the Euro sign be replaced by the three letter currency code ‘EUR’. When there is no room for expansion, a capital ‘E’ would be the next level of fallback, unless it would create problems in its context (e.g. with the floating point notation), in which case a user specific fallback would need to be defined. 3. Input In this report, the only input mechanism to be described presently in any detail is the keyboard. Scanning and related OCR-B and bar codes are discussed only briefly, but those sections will be expanded in future versions. Voice recognition has not been discussed at all, nor have the special needs of handicapped people. 3.1. Keyboards The keyboards can be divided into general purpose and special purpose keyboards. 3.1.1. General Purpose Keyboards On the keyboards, there is no international standard in existence or in process that would cover the national primary keyboard layouts in its scope. In fact, in many EMU countries, there is not an up-to-date (or even outdated) national keyboard layout standard in existence. The EU Commission has produced a recommendation which it is likely to enforce for the procurement for the EU / EEA official business. The European subsidiarity principle is very strong and would prohibit CEC from mandating anything for the national keyboard layouts; the non-existence of any such international (worldwide or European) standard is essentially for the same reason. 3 N853 The Open Workshop on the Euro in IT Standardization held in Brussels in February decided to support the CEC "short term" recommendation (AltGr+e for most European countries), but not their initial "long term" recommendation (a special key, which the Commission has agreed to change to the intent to follow an international standard if and when such a standard becomes available). After the Euro workshop, CEN/TC304 has passed a resolution that does this also. Thus, CEN/TC304 is the only wide area standardization body that has made any recommendation for the placement of the Euro in the primary layout. The ISO 9995-3 keyboard layout standard (for Group 2) is only intended for use when the national/local primary keyboard layout (specified by the NB or e.g. a vendor) does not include the Euro (in Group 1). Thus, no conflict between its positioning of the Euro and the recommendation exists, unless one reads more into the ISO 9995-3 than what is in its scope. To complicate the issue, Group 2 is not accessible on most keyboards, nor is there a standardized method to access Group 2 (or even Level 3 in Group 1), although some work in this area has been proposed. In line with the recommendation, e.g. Microsoft will support keyboards with AltGr+e used for the Euro in most European countries; the notable exceptions are AltGr+4 for Ireland and the UK (following the recommendation, though), AltGr+5 for US- International and Greece (or AltGr+epsilon), and AltGr+u for Hungary and Poland; in addition, for certain countries, Microsoft will also support a second location (usually AltGr+5). IBM and a number of other manufacturers are known to have similar (but not necessarily identical) plans to support the recommendation. Incidentally, the support does not necessarily require a new keyboard, normally a new kb driver will do. National standardization on keyboards cannot be expected to provide timely guidance to industry on where to place the Euro on general purpose keyboards. 3.1.2. Special Purpose Keyboards The placement of the Euro sign on special purpose keyboards (e.g. on ATMs and cash registers) is still wide open and must be addressed by the relevant industries and the related standardization bodies.