Re: euro symbol

[Francesco Potorti`]

   > I made a change to latin-post.el and latin.alt.el for entering the euro
   > symbol in the italian input styles.
   
   I wish you discussed here non-trivial changes such as this one before
   committing them.  

In fact it *is* a trivial change  (it just adds a new input method for a
single  character in  a single  national language)  that does  not break
anything that  existed before.  I  think it is  also a good  change, and
that  it is better  than before,  given that  no Italian  latin-9 method
curently exists.

By   the   way,   it's    me   who   wrote   the   italian-postfix   and
italian-alt-postfix methods,  which together  with the reasons  above is
why I dared to commit the changes without asking.

                     I've just tried one input method you've changed
   (italian-postfix), and the change does the wrong thing: typing "E="
   inserts the latin-1 currency character, not the Euro (which doesn't
   exist in Latin-1).

It has the  same character code.  So, on a console,  it depends on which
font you have loaded.  On X, it shows the international currency symbol.
   
   So you simply lie to Emacs about the font: you tell it it's a Latin-1
   font, whereas in reality it's a Latin-9 (a.k.a. 8859-15) font.  That's
   hardly something to base changes on, I'm afraid.

Yes, I was not aware that  iso-8859-15 is latin-9, thanks to Alan Shutko
and  you for  telling me.   However, having  a simple  way to  input the
international currency symbol is good, in my opinion.  You cannot always
have a latin-9 font, while latin-1  is much more common.  If you have to
do with latin-1, the international currency is a good substitute for the
euro symbol.  That's why I think that change should be left alone.

More than that, I again ask if people think that the general latin-1 and
national  input  methods  should  have  a similarly  simple  method  for
entering the international currency symbol.
   
   It certainly does: there's the latin-9-prefix input method (you get
   the Euro if you type "~e").  Maybe we need more Latin-9 support; if
   so, let's add more input methods, but let's do it right.

Hm.  So I  should add an Italian style for  latin-9.  However, the tilde
was  maybe an  unfortunate  choice.   It certainly  is  for Italian,  as
Italian keyboards do not have a tilde symbol.  The other obvious choices
are minus  and equal.  I  chose the latter  because it is  less commonly
used and  requires a  shift (on  an Italian keyboard).   Then I  chose E
instead  of e  because that  is  shifted also.   This led  to "E="  (all
Italian input styles are postfix ones).