Euro Character Support Mini HOWTO
Ari Mäkelä
hauva@arska.org
Revision History
Revision v1.0.2 2002-04-06 Revised by: am
Added the info that emacs support is read-only and removed the question about
how the support works.
Revision v1.0.1 2002-03-03 Revised by: am
Cent: added comment that cent is not usually used. More Euro links. Added
information on KDE and Gnome.
Revision v1.0.0 2001-09-29 Revised by: am
Original release
Abstract
This document describes how to make the Euro character support in GNU/Linux
work. Finnish users might be interested to consult the Finnish HOWTO which is
written in Finnish.
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Table of Contents
1. Copyright and Thanks
2. The Euro Character
3. The Euro and Locales
4. The Euro and the Console
5. The Euro in the X Window System
5.1. KDE
5.2. GTK and Gnome
6. Emacs
7. Euro-links
1. Copyright and Thanks
The document is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License , version 1.1.
Thanks for numerous people who gave me advice in Usenet.
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2. The Euro Character
The new character set, ISO-8859-15 which is also known as latin9 and in
order to maximize confusion as latin0, was created to replace ISO-8859-1
(latin1) and it includes the euro character.
The Euro is mapped to AltGr-e and the cent - if it is used - is mapped to
AltGr-Shift-e in X and on AltGr-c on console.
The Euro Mini HOWTO was written on a Debian system and the set up works on
Debian 3.0 (Debian testing as the time of writing).
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3. The Euro and Locales
glibc 2.2 and newer support the Euro. The correct locale is, for example,
fi_FI@euro.
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4. The Euro and the Console
Check that the file /usr/share/keymaps/include/euro.inc.gz includes lines
altgr keycode 18 = currency
altgr keycode 46 = cent
A console font, which suppports euro, must be loaded. Red Hat uses command
setfont and Debian uses command consolechars.
In Debian the file /etc/console-tools/config must have ISO-8859-15 screen
font:
SCREEN_FONT=lat0-16
In Red Hat the file /etc/sysconfig/i18n must have lines
SYSFONT=lat0-16
SYSFONTACM=iso15
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5. The Euro in the X Window System
With default configuration AltGr-e (the right Alt for those who have no
AltGr) produces the generic currency symbol which looks like a four legged
spider. When the font of the program is changed to a ISO-8859-15 font the
currency symbol is replaced by the Euro symbol. In Debian this can be
achieved by adding line
.XTerm.VT100.font: -jmk-neep alt-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-15
to the file /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm. The fonts available in
distributions and installations vary.
If AltGr-e does not work add line
keycode 26 = e E EuroSign
to the file /etc/X11/Xmodmap
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5.1. KDE
Change the font setting in KControl to ISO-8859-15.
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5.2. GTK and Gnome
Change the font setting in Gnome Control Center to ISO-8859-15.
A better way of doing this is changing the system wide GTK+ configuration
with commands
cd /etc/gtk
ln -s gtkrc.iso-8859-15 gtkrc
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6. Emacs
Emacsen 21 and newer have partial euro support. The following elisp should
work:
(set-face-font
'default '"-*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-15")
Note that you cannot write Euro characters. You can only see them.
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7. Euro-links
KWord Euro Page . Debian Euro HOWTO . Euro Character Support mini HOWTO
Guylhem Aznar's Euro Pack The README of the Euro Pack Linux Journal on the
Euro Pack
