Michael (michka) Kaplan wrote:
> I tend to look up on the following site, where such info can
> always be found
> tucked away:
>
> http://www.uselessknowledge.com/word/dollar.shtml
(Thanks! It's since my childhood that I wish to know what "pieces of eight"
means! I think that I the phrase was said by Long Silver's parrot in The
Treasury Island.)
About the "$" sign, I always thought that the S was the abbreviation of
Latin "solidus" ("solid (gold)"?, whence Italian "soldi": money).
The bar (possibly doubled) should just be a common way of meaning "this is a
currency symbol, not a normal letter".
The same bar(s) is/are also found in "£" (L for "libra" = "pound", whence
Italian "lira"), "¢" (C for "centesimus" = "hundredth (part)"), and "₥" for
("millesimus" = "thousandth (part)"). The bar(s) have then been copied also
on other modern currency symbols such as "¥", "¢", "₣", "£", "₦", "₨", "₩",
and "€".
About "£" (L with two bars = "Italian lira" or "Egypt/Cyprus pound") and "£"
(L with one bar = "Pound Sterling" or "Irish punt"), I think that the
Unicode distinction is not valid because:
1) Manuscript labels in Italian, British, and Irish shops and markets, show
that both variants are used everywhere;
2) The characters which is actually on Italian and keyboards is U+00A3,
always shown with one bar.
3) In many European languages "lira" and "pound" are the same word. E.g.,
in Italian, ITL = "lira italiana", IEP = "lira irlandese", UKP = "lira
sterlina", EGP = "lira egiziana", TUL = "lira turca", CYP = "lira cipriota",
etc.
For these reason, I suggest that font designers ignore the distinction
between U+00A3 (POUND SIGN) and U+20A4 (LIRA SIGN) and use the same glyph
for both. The glyphs should have one or two bars depending on the font
style and on the choice made for other currency symbols.
_ Marco
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 08:37:16 EDT