OPENSTEP and the Euro
Because Apple's OPENSTEP 4.2 for Mach operating system was released before the Euro symbol was created, the built-in fonts and key mappings do not take the Euro into account. Many third-party fonts are available which include the Euro character. These fonts fall into two categories:
- Fonts which map every keystroke to the Euro character
- Fonts which include the Euro character as part of a standard character set
Using a Font with Only the Euro Character
A set of fonts which map every character to the Euro symbol is available free from Adobe. Because every character in this font will draw a Euro glyph, no special keyboard mapping or other configuration is required. To install:
- Download the fonts from http://www.adobe.com/type/eurofont.html
- Use a third-party utility to convert the font to OPENSTEP format
- Follow the standard procedure to install the new font on your OPENSTEP system
After you've converted and installed the fonts, simply type any character and change it to the appropriate Euro font. Bear in mind that the Euro character will not display on systems or print on printers which do not have the appropriate Euro font installed.
Using a Font Which Includes The Euro Character
Many standard PostScript fonts are available which include the Euro glyph in their standard character set. To use one of these fonts under OPENSTEP:
If you haven't already, install OPENSTEP 4.2 for Mach Patch 2 on your system
- Convert the font to OPENSTEP format if necessary
- Follow the standard procedure to install the new font on your OPENSTEP system
- Choose a key you wish to represent the Euro character
- Use /NextDeveloper/Demos/Keyboard.app to bind the desired key to symbol 0xA0 in your keymapping
- Save your new key mapping to ~/Library/Keyboards or /LocalLibrary/Keyboards
Applications not based on the OPENSTEP AppKit, such as Mail, Edit, and Workspace, won't be able to display the Euro character. However, you will now be able to use the Euro character in all AppKit-based applications. You can also create strings containing the Euro character programmatically, using NSString's initWithCharacters: method. The Euro currency symbol has a Unicode value of 0x20ac.