Since Latin-1 was the
encoding of choice prior to Latin-9 (and still is in many situations),
there really are much more data encoded as 8859-1 than as 8859-9. To state
that a subset of Latin-1 is not Latin 1 is incorrect
[Alain] The idea behind standardizing Latin-9 was to serve as a standard interchange between all 8-bit-character-set-capable-only platforms so as to support the EURO sign, and French and Finnish integrally.
EBCDIC can't support more than 191 graphic characters and therefore can't be extended to support MS-1252 character in which most French and Finnish PC data is encoded. This data needs to be interchanged with other platforms actually. Even if the �|� (oe|OE) is not available on many keyboards it has been generated automatically for a while in data by WinWord (with the Canadian keyboard I type it dicrectly myself).
A standard, straightforward, interchange for this was missing. It now exists.
Most pure Latin-1-encoded data is also in practice Latin-9-encoded at once (the differences between Latin 1 and Latin 9 is due to mostly unused and almost unsignificant characters [standalone accents, broken bar -- the one that can have no effect syntactically even under DOS, and a nearly unusable -- because too limited -- subset of vulgar fractions -- most of Europe uses the decimal system anyway, and certainly the French speakers and the Finns]).
Latin-9 was required as the missing standard link for French and Finnish between EBCDIC, PCs, Macs, UNIX-based systems, and Unicode, to convey significant data back and forth between all these platforms without loss. That was the intent. It still makes sense.
Alain LaBont�
Charlesbourg (offline from now on for 48 hours at least)
