On Sun, Jul 23, 2006 at 06:41:09PM -0400, cga2000 wrote: > Avoid words such as "coeur".. "boeuf".. etc. Rather amazing that the > French who are so picky about anything that concerns their language > never came up with a codepage.. or whatever it's called that features > this particular character.
I think it dates from the days when typewriters were popular. The US dominance of the market for office equipment prompted many European languages to manage without combinations like oe, ae and ij where the characters can be approximated by typing separate letters. It's easier to change typing habits than to manufacture a new range of typewriters just to deal with one special letter. Prior to computers many keyboards didn't even have separate keys for the digits 1 and 0, typists using the letters l and O instead. -- Matthew Winn ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
