Euro Character Support Mini HOWTO

Ari Mäkelä

hauva@arska.org

Revision History
Revision v1.0.22002-04-06Revised by: am
Added the info that emacs support is read-only and removed the question about how the support works.
Revision v1.0.12002-03-03Revised by: am
Cent: added comment that cent is not usually used. More Euro links. Added information on KDE and Gnome.
Revision v1.0.02001-09-29Revised 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.

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.

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).

3. The Euro and Locales

glibc 2.2 and newer support the Euro. The correct locale is, for example, fi_FI@euro.

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

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

5.1. KDE

Change the font setting in KControl to ISO-8859-15.

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

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.

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