On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 03:36:54AM EDT, Matthew Winn wrote: > 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.
.. hmm.. as far as I know only France and Germany went to the trouble of designing their own typewriter keyboard layouts separate from the QWERTY model. I think Polish keyboards are derived from the German layout.. I would assume variations of the French layout are used in other French-speaking countries and some African countries.. As to other European countries - ie. the ones that speak neither French nor German - I believe that you are correct and that they use derivatives of the US keyboard. Therefore, since the French went so far as building keyboards that have the basic letters arranged differently (AZERTY instead of QWERTY) it would not have been such a major enhancement to provide an "oe" some place on that keyboard..? I have a feeling it is more a question of whoever designed the original French typewriter keyboard just did not think it worth bothering with such typographic niceties as providing an "o dans l'e" (or is it the other way round?) when the end result with fixed-width characters was going to be light-years removed from the refinements of traditional typesetting anyway.. But I would agree that the absence of the "oe" on French keyboards (typewriters and computers alike) probably accounts for the fact that you can't find it anywhere in the latin* charsets. > > 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. I was aware of the l/1 thing.. sometimes use it when I feel lazy. Thanks cga
