Euro Currency Support in Solaris

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Contents:

Preface

1. The Euro in Information Technology Standards

2. Euro Currency Implementation
   • 2.1 Euro Currency Support in Single-Byte Locales
     • 2.1.1 Locale-Specific Euro Currency Formatting ("@euro" Extension)
     • 2.1.2 Dual-Currency Support in the Euro Locales
     • 2.1.3 Locale Settings for ISO 8859-15 Locales
     • 2.1.4 Locale Settings for ISO 8859-15 "@euro" Extensions
   • 2.2 Euro Currency Support in Unicode Locales
     • 2.2.1 Locale Settings for Unicode "@euro" Extensions
   • 2.3 Input and Output Support
     • 2.3.1 Keyboard Support
     • 2.3.2 Font Support
     • 2.3.3 Printer Support
     • 2.3.4 Codeset Conversion

3. Euro Support Availability
   • 3.1 The Solaris Operating Environment
   • 3.2 Java Technology-based Software

4. Resources

The introduction of the euro as the single European currency profoundly impacts the way enterprises operate. The transition to the euro also has a number of practical consequences for the day-to-day operations of enterprises, such as preparing information systems for the use of the euro. To fulfill this need, careful planning is essential. However, recent surveys have shown that few enterprises, except perhaps for large banks and insurance companies, are actually prepared.

The impact of the euro is far-ranging, and not limited solely to European companies. Anyone conducting a financial transaction with a European customer or supplier will find it necessary to modify their information systems to support the euro. And many of these companies may be located in regions outside Europe, for in today's global economy, the distinction of geographical location has become increasingly blurred.

Examples of systems that are affected by the introduction of the euro include:

• Accounting software (general ledger)
• Electronic payment and trading systems
• Invoicing and billing systems
• Payroll systems
• Accounts receivable and accounts payable subledgers
• Inventory systems that record the value of the inventory
• Fixed asset systems that monitor value and depreciation charges of assets
• Work-in-progress (WIP) systems
• Financial planning and budgeting software, for example:
• Costing systems
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems
• Treasury management systems
• Legal databases containing financial contracts

Planning the transition of information systems to handle the euro is not just a matter of dealing with the practical issues and consequences. For many enterprises, there will be strategy-level issues that need attention, which can fundamentally affect the way an enterprise conducts business. These strategic considerations do not specifically fall within the scope of this white paper, but should certainly be taken into account before modifying those systems for the use of the euro.

Table 1  Timetable for Transition to the Euro

This white paper outlines the technical implementation of support for the euro within the Solaris Operating Environment, and provides guidance to developers tasked with the transition of application or information systems to support the euro currency standard.

The Solaris Operating Environment and the Java language provide input, output, and printing support for the euro, as well as system support for independent software vendors (ISVs) who wish to use supported APIs to format monetary strings. This white paper describes how euro currency support is implemented.

Since euro currency will be used on a global scale, the euro is being registered in several international standards. At the time of writing, the following reflects the status of the euro with regard to information technology standards.

• ISO/IEC final proof 8859-15:1999 Information technology -- 8-bit, single-byte coded graphic character sets -- Part 15: Latin alphabet No. 9
  
  
• ISO 4217:2001 Codes for the representation of currencies and funds
  
  Banking and electronic commerce generally use a three-letter code to represent particular currencies; these codes are registered at the international level by adoption into ISO 4217. The Secretariat General of the European Commission, working with banks and industry, has approached the maintenance authority (BSI) for ISO 4217 and has had "EUR" registered as the three-letter currency code for the euro.
  
  The euro symbol glyph, which is a rounded E with a double central bar, has been registered by the Association for Font Information Interchange (AFII) as a part of ISO/IEC 10036:1996. The ISO Glyph ID is 8959. The glyph is shown below:

  Figure 1 The Euro

• W3C-HTML 4.0
  
  The code &EURO is supported by HTML 4.0.
  
  
• Unicode 2.1 has included the euro currency symbol at position hex20AC. 

Support for the euro in the Solaris Operating Environment is achieved without any API changes. Instead, support is achieved by providing a new set of locales and locale extensions for single-byte and multibyte environments. The single-byte locales are based on a new, proposed ISO 8859 codeset: ISO 8859-15 (Latin 9). This new codeset is being introduced to support additional characters for French and Finnish, and to support the euro.

The euro has been placed at position 10/04 in the new ISO 8859-15 codeset. In this white paper, ISO 8859-15 is only discussed with regard to the euro.

A new codeset is not required in the multibyte environments because the Solaris Operating Environment multibyte locales are based on Unicode.

Additionally, special locale extensions are necessary for both single-byte and multibyte locales to support locale-specific euro currency formatting with regard to dual-currency handling.

2.1   Euro Currency Support in Single-Byte Locales

Versions up?to the Solaris 8 Operating Environment provide a new set of single-byte locales to support the euro. To use the euro, users must be running in one of the locales defined in Table 1. In all of these locales, users can input, output, and print the euro.

Table 1  Single-Byte Euro Locales in the Solaris Operating Environment

Sun has opted to provide national currency support for these locales rather than euro currency support. This is because most users wish to continue to use their national currencies during the earlier part of the transition period. During this time, users may still input, output, and print the euro. To facilitate those users and developers who wish to have input, output, and print support as well as locale-specific euro currency formatting, the Solaris Operating Environment provides an extension to each ISO 8859-15 locale. However, national currency formatting rules will apply rather than euro currency formatting rules if an application formats currency strings using the Solaris internationalization APIs.

For future versions of Solaris software, the locales in Table 2 provide euro currency support instead of national currency support. This is because, as of February 2002, the national currency unit will be switched over to the euro.

Table 2  Single-Byte Euro Locales in the Solaris Operating Environment Supporting the Euro Currency

2.1.1   Locale-Specific Euro Currency Formatting ("@euro" Extension)

Solaris 7 Operating Environment

The euro, like any other currency, has a cultural element. In other words, individual countries will use their own national conventions for formatting euro currency strings. The ISO 8859-15 locales in the Solaris Operating Environment will use national currency conventions to format currency strings. To provide locale-specific euro currency formatting, the Solaris Operating Environment provides an "@euro" extension to these locales. The "@" modifier is part of the XPG-4 standard, and allows finer granularity in locale definitions.

For example:

fr.ISO8859-15 uses national (French) currency formatting rules.

fr.ISO8859-15@euro uses euro currency formatting rules.

Solaris 8 Operating Environment

The Solaris 8 Operating Environment does not have "@euro" locales at the dtlogin screen. For euro currency support, users should refer to the  International Language Environments Guide for further information. To provide locale-specific euro currency formatting, the Solaris Operating Environment provides an "@euro" extension to these locales. The "@" modifier is part of the XPG-4 standard, and allows finer granularity in locale definitions.

For example:

fr_FR.ISO8859-15 uses national (French) currency formatting rules.

fr_FR.ISO8859-15@euro uses euro currency formatting rules.

Each ISO 8859-15 locale supports the "@euro" extension.

Future Versions of the Solaris Operating Environment

It is planned that future versions of the Solaris Operating Environment will not have "@euro" locales at the dtlogin screen. ISO 8859-15 euro currency supported locales are exactly the same as ISO 8859-15 locales with "@euro" extension. Refer to Table 2 for a list of locales.

Output for French currency example:

fr_FR.ISO8859-15 uses euro currency formatting rules.

fr_FR.ISO8859-15@euro uses euro currency formatting rules.

Output for English currency example:

en_GB.ISO8859-15 uses national (English) currency formatting rules.

en_GB.ISO8859-15@euro uses euro currency formatting rules.

For future versions of Solaris software, el_GR.ISO8859-7 (Greek) also provides euro currency support.

en_GR.ISO8859-7 uses euro currency formatting rules.

2.1.2   Dual-Currency Support in the Euro Locales

Accessing locale data based on ISO 8859-15 is no different from accessing locale data for any other locale in the Solaris Operating Environment. Users should refer to the International Language Environments Guide for further information. However, using these locales in a dual-currency environment requires additional explanation.

One of the requirements for business during the transition period (January 1, 1999 to December 31, 2002) is to display prices in both the national currency and the euro. The Solaris 8 Operating Environment and previous versions provide support for this through the "@euro" extension to its locales. An example program shows how this can be achieved.

(In February 2001, the euro locales with "@euro" extensions were removed. Locales which use the euro as its national currency unit are supported in the ISO 8859_15 locales.)

Note - For illustration purposes, the following example carries out a fictional exchange rate conversion (1 French Franc = 2 euro). Exchange rate support is not provided by the Solaris Operating Environment, and should be handled by the application.

Example: Dual-Currency Handling in Solaris

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <locale.h>
#include <monetary.h>
char buf[20];
main(argc,argv)
int argc;
char *argv[];

{

double num = atoi(argv[1]);
setlocale(LC_MONETARY, "fr");
strfmon(buf, sizeof(buf), "%n", num);
printf("National currency format is %sn",buf);
strfmon(buf, sizeof(buf), "%i", num);
printf("International currency format is%sn",buf);
setlocale(LC_MONETARY, "fr.ISO8859-15@euro");
num=num*2; strfmon(buf, sizeof(buf), "%n", num);
printf("National currency format is%sn",buf);
strfmon(buf, sizeof(buf), "%i", num);
printf("International currency format is%sn",buf);

}

The output from this program is:

Note - To change locales in a multithreaded application, setlocale() should be called prior to using any locale-sensitive routine. Using setlocale() to query the current locale is safe, and can be used anywhere in a multithreaded application.

2.1.3   Locale Settings for ISO 8859-15 Locales

Locale settings (LC_*, excluding LC_MESSAGES) are defined in the Solaris software locale definition files. These files are defined and supplied by Sun's Localization Centers and are based on XPG-4 specifications. For further information on the content of locale definition files, please refer to the X/Open[r] Internationalization Guide Version 2. Following are the detailed changes made to the LC_* settings of ISO 8859-15 locales in order to support the euro.

LC_MESSAGES

LC_MESSAGES for each ISO 8859-15 locale will be symbolically linked to its ISO 8859-1 equivalent. It is possible that this linkage will cause codeset compatibility issues, since messages will be encoded in ISO 8859-1 and not ISO 8859-15. However, this should have minimal impact since the characters being replaced in ISO 8859-1 are rarely used.

LC_TIME, LC_NUMERIC

LC_TIME and LC_NUMERIC in the ISO 8859-15 locales will be in the same format as their ISO 8859-1 locale equivalents.

LC_CTYPE, LC_COLLATE

LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE will be <locale>_iso8859-15 specific. Most of the delta characters in ISO 8859-15, that is, those different from ISO 8859-1, can be classified as uppercase or lowercase, therefore requiring a locale-specific ISO 8859-15 classification. Similarly, these delta characters will be sorted differently than those they replaced in ISO 8859-1 and must use a separate locale-specific ISO 8859-15 sort sequence.

LC_MONETARY

2.1.4   Locale Settings for ISO 8859-15 "@euro" Extensions

ISO 8859-15 locales in Table 2 are exactly the same as their "@euro" extensions. For the rest of the ISO 8859-15 locales, the only difference between ISO 8859-15 locales and their "@euro" extensions is in LC_MONETARY. In locales using the "@euro" extension, LC_MONETARY will contain locale-specific formatting information for the euro.

2.2   Euro Currency Support in Unicode Locales

The Solaris Operating Environment provides multibyte Unicode (UTF-8) locales to enable users to work in a multilingual and multiscript environment. These UTF-8 locales are based on Unicode 3.1, which contains the euro currency symbol at position hex20AC. Therefore, no additional codeset is required to support the euro in the Solaris software multibyte environment.

In all UTF-8 locales, users can input, output, and print the euro currency symbol. Locale-specific euro currency formatting is supported for multibyte locales through the "@euro" extensions.

Table 3  Unicode UTF-8 Euro Locales in the Solaris Operating Environment

For example:

de_DE.UTF-8 uses national (German) currency formatting rules. 
de_DE.UTF-8@euro uses euro currency formatting rules. 

For future versions of the Solaris Operating Environment, Sun plans to use the Unicode UTF-8 locales in Table 4 to provide euro currency support. The "@euro" extension after the UTF-8 locales is removed.

Table 5  Unicode UTF-8 Locales With Euro Currency Support in the Solaris Operating Environment

For the rest of the Unicode UTF-8 locales, however, national currency formatting rules will apply rather than euro currency formatting rules if an application formats currency strings using the Solaris software internationalization APIs.

For example:

pl_PL.UTF-8 uses national (Polish) currency formatting rules.
de_DE.UTF-8 uses euro currency formatting rules.

Dual-currency support in the UTF-8 locales and their extensions is the same as that in single-byte locales.

Note - It is planned that future releases of the Solaris Operating Environment will include support for UTF-8 versions of other European locales.

2.2.1   Locale Settings for Unicode "@euro" Extensions

Besides the Unicode UTF-8 locales in Table 4, the only difference between the Unicode UTF-8 locales and their "@euro" extensions is in LC_MONETARY. In locales using the "@euro" extension, LC_MONETARY will contain locale-specific formatting information for the euro.

2.3   Input and Output Support

Input and output support for keyboards, fonts, and codeset conversion is detailed in the following sections.

2.3.1   Keyboard Support

In April 1998, the European Commission (EC) issued recommendations on the placement of the euro currency symbol on computer keyboards. The EC recommendation refers to the three main functional levels in keyboard standards:

• Level 1: Press the "M" key to produce "m"

• Level 2: Press SHIFT and "m" to produce "M"

• Level 3: Press the AltGraph key and "A" on a UK keyboard to produce "à"

The EC proposed both a short-term and long-term solution. The short-term proposal is to place the euro currency symbol on the "E" key at level 3. This means that the euro may be generated by pressing two keys: AltGraph and "E". The EC also recommends that the symbol be engraved on the keytop, which is common practice for many level 3 characters on European keyboards, such as German. This short-term solution was chosen because it can be implemented easily, it can be used on most national keyboards, and is ergonomically sound. The key combination is also easy to remember, since "E" can be associated with "euro".

However, some countries already use the AltGraph+E key combination to produce the "è" character, including for example, the United Kingdom and Ireland. The EC has offered some alternative solutions for these countries. One alternative is to place the euro currency symbol at level 3 on Keys "3" or "4", both of which already contain currency signs at level 2 on most keyboards.

The long-term proposal is to introduce a new euro currency-symbol key on future keyboards. This new key would be in a common position at level 1 for all countries.

Sun Keyboard Strategy

Sun has adopted the short-term proposal for placement of the euro currency symbol on keyboards, meaning the euro will be placed at level 3 and can be generated by pressing AltGraph+E. For contended keyboards, such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, and U.S. International, the euro will be located at level 3, but generated by the AltGraph+4 key combination. The euro can also be generated on U.S. International keyboards with AltGraph+5 or AltGraph+E key combinations. Table 5 summarizes the placement of the euro currency symbol on Sun Type 6 keyboards.

Table 5   Placement of the Euro Currency Symbol on Sun Type 6 Keyboards

Keyboard Input in UTF-8 Locales

Sun also provides two additional ways of inputting the euro:

• Unicode Hexadecimal code input method
• Table lookup method

In the Unicode Hexadecimal input method, the user can generate the euro currency symbol by switching into this input method and typing the Unicode value for the symbol (U+20AC).

Users can also use a table lookup method to generate the euro. This input method is activated by pressing Compose and then Control+L, which will provide a list of possible scripts. Choose "Latin", then choose the euro from the table of characters.

2.3.2   Font Support

The following fonts have been added to the Solaris Operating Environment to allow the euro to display and print:

monotype-arial-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-arial-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-arial-regular-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-arial-regular-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-courier-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-15
monotype-courier-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-15
monotype-courier-regular-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-15
monotype-courier-regular-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-15
monotype-times-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-times-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-times-regular-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
monotype-times-regular-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
b&h-lucidabright-demibold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
b&h-lucidabright-demibold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
b&h-lucidabright-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
b&h-lucidabright-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
b&h-lucidasans-bold-r-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
b&h-lucidasans-bold-i-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
b&h-lucidasans-medium-i-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
b&h-lucidasans-medium-r-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15
b&h-lucidatypewriter-bold-r-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-15
b&h-lucidatypewriter-bold-i-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-15
b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-i-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-15
b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-15


And for euro support for el_GR.ISO 8859-7 (Greek):

monotype-arial-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-arial-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-arial-regular-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-arial-regular-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-arial greek-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-arial greek-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-arial greek-regular-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-arial greek-regular-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-courier-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-7
monotype-courier-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-7
monotype-courier-regular-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-7
monotype-courier-regular-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-7
monotype-times-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-times-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-times-regular-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-times-regular-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-times new roman greek-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-times new roman greek-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-times new roman greek-regular-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
monotype-times new roman greek-regular-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
b&h-lucidabright-demibold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
b&h-lucidabright-demibold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
b&h-lucidabright-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
b&h-lucidabright-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
b&h-lucidasans-bold-r-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
b&h-lucidasans-bold-i-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
b&h-lucidasans-medium-i-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
b&h-lucidasans-medium-r-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-7
b&h-lucidatypewriter-bold-r-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-7
b&h-lucidatypewriter-bold-i-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-7
b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-i-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-7
b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-sans-0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-7

No additional tasks are necessary for users or developers to access the new euro fonts. Users should refer to their X-Window System documentation for information on accessing fonts in X.

2.3.3   Printer Support

The Solaris Operating Environment does not assume that printers will have the correct fonts installed.

For versions up to the Solaris 7 Operating Environment, system fonts are downloaded to the printer with the document to be printed. Likewise, euro fonts will be downloaded to the printer automatically when printing documents in the ISO 8859-15 or UTF-8 locales.

For Solaris 8 software and onwards, fonts are not downloaded automatically to the printer. An application called Font Downloader is needed to download the required fonts to the selected printer. This is required for all non-ISO 8859-1 locales. Please refer to the International Language Environment Guide for information.

2.3.4   Codeset Conversion

Codeset conversion support for roundtrip conversion between ISO 8859-15 and UTF-8 using new iconv(1) modules has been added to the Solaris Operating Environment. Users can access these modules via the iconv(1) command. Developers can access these modules via the iconv(3) function. The Common Deskset Environment (CDE) dtmail utility has also been modified to ensure that outgoing e-mail based on ISO 8859-15 is tagged accordingly. Likewise, support has been added in dtmail to ensure appropriate codeset conversion of incoming ISO 8859-15, MIME-compliant e-mail. Codeset conversion will only happen if the local dtmail is running in a UTF-8 locale.

3.1   The Solaris Operating Environment

It is planned that future releases of the Solaris Operating Environment will provide support for the euro. Currently, support for the euro currency symbol is available in the locales listed in Table 1.

Table 1   Current Locale Support for the Euro

Note - These locales refer to Solaris software version 7 and 8 only.

3.2   Java Technology-based Software

Support for the euro currency is available in JDK software version 1.1.7 and 1.1.8, as well as the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition v1.2 and later, and can be downloaded from java.sun.com.

The following links provide useful information regarding the transition to the euro currency.

• IT impact of the euro:
  
  http://europa.eu.int/ISPO/y2keuro/euroit.htm
  
  
• Official euro Web site of the European Commission:
  
  http://europa.eu.int/euro/
  
  
• Available patches for the Solaris Operating Environment:
  
  http://www.sun.com/solaris/euro
  
  
• Solaris 7 Globalization Demo:
  
  http://www.sun.com/solaris/7

December 2001