India's New Rupee Symbol Won't Show On Computers 252
itwbennett writes "It will take at least 18 months for encoding in Unicode the symbol for the Indian rupee that was approved by the Indian cabinet on Thursday. But it may be over two years before the rupee symbol starts showing on computers and mobile phones, analysts said. Many vendors are also undecided whether they will offer the new symbol on keyboards and keypads, or as additions in software to the character set supported by their devices. Nokia, for example, welcomed the move by the Indian government to have a symbol for the rupee. But a company spokeswoman said it's too early to comment on how the symbol will be implemented, whether on the phone keypad or on the character list."
Back in the good ol days (Score:3, Funny)
If I had my way, real life symbols would resemble the symbols in games- like gem shapes.
Re:Back in the good ol days (Score:5, Informative)
There is a generic currency sign [wikipedia.org] in Unicode (and it was also there "back in the good old days", in Latin-1).
Re:Back in the good ol days (Score:4, Funny)
Do you mean control-D?
We use to have fun putting that as the first byte in someones .login file.
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I think you mean ruffie?
Euro (Score:5, Interesting)
How long did it take the Euro sign to get easily usable by computers? I think much longer than they predict for the rupee sign. These things take time, but a short time in comparison with the lifetime of the symbols in European and Indian society, so don't worry about it too much.
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heh, i just wonder how long until it shows up in some game or other as the designer got it confused with the eye of ra...
Re:Euro (Score:5, Funny)
Been there, done that [userfriendly.org]
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I STILL can't find the Euro on my computer, and you'll be lucky if you can convince me to look at an ASCII table.
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Extremely lucky, as the euro symbol isn't part of the ASCII set. Now, looking in a UTF-8 table, that could work.
Mine is conveniently located below the E, and it's used pressing ISO_Level3_Shift (bound to Alt Gr) and E.
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€
Alt+0128
AltGr+E if your keyboard layout is European
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Dutch (set to US-International with dead keys) keyboard: AltGr + 5
Yay standardisation!
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But the British keyboards are way off compared to my Scandinavian keyboard!
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P.S. AltGr is mapped to the right Alt key and is actually a Ctrl+Alt key. This also means, naturally, that any Ctrl+Alt hotkey combination (except Ctrl+Alt+Delete) can be typed with the AltGr key instead.
If your keyboard doesn’t say “AltGr” on the right Alt key you can still assign a European layout in the system language settings and the right Alt will become the AltGr key. The left Alt key will still be the normal Alt key.
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Or if you're running Solaris, where this will work even with a US keyboard layout.
Re:Euro (Score:5, Funny)
I don’t believe you, as I can’t remember any time span between the Euro being introduced and it being typable. I remember a quick patch pushed trough Windows update, and another patch for Linux, and it was done.
I specifically remember that I never faced the problem of being unable to enter it.
Except on Slashdot of course. But it’s a surprise that Slashdot doesn’t still use Baudot or Murray encoding. I bet internally, it still runs on a special ternary hacked variant of the morse code. ;)
Whitelist (5:erocS) (Score:3, Interesting)
Except on Slashdot of course.
Slashdot uses a character whitelist to keep unexpected Unicode characters from breaking the layout. This was instituted after widespread exploitation of the erocS glitch [google.com].
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Except on Slashdot of course.
Slashdot uses a character whitelist to keep unexpected Unicode characters from breaking the layout. This was instituted after widespread exploitation of the erocS glitch [google.com].
Yes, but it's stupid that such common symbols as £ and € aren't on the whitelist.
However, it reflects common stereotypes of Americans.
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(Maybe the /. editors didn't notice the fix, since this week's poll had "—" in it — since corrected to --.)
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I remember a quick patch [for the Euro symbol] pushed trough Windows update...
The Euro Sign was unveiled on the 12th of December, 1996.
Meanwhile, Windows Update was released with the launch of Windows 98.
In fact, I remember applying a patch for Windows 3.1 for Euro sign support. Which did not come through Windows update.
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We like to call it perl.
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Dumb question - What was wrong with the old Rupee symbol?
Also what does it mean? The Euro Sign is a stylized E, to represent Europe's currency. And the Dollar Sign is a slashed S to represent Spain's currency (where the symbol originated).
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Also what does it mean? The Euro Sign is a stylized E, to represent Europe's currency.
Take another look at the rupee symbol; it is a stylized R, slashed similarly to the euro.
Re:Euro (Score:5, Informative)
Dumb question - What was wrong with the old Rupee symbol?
It wasn't a symbol, but rather just two letters ("Rs"). Which isn't "cool", I guess...
Also what does it mean? The Euro Sign is a stylized E, to represent Europe's currency.
It's a stylized Latin "R" (without the vertical stem, and with two crossbars on top). It is also fairly similar to Devanagari [wikipedia.org] letter corresponding to "R".
Re:Euro (Score:5, Insightful)
There's the hack then. Use a Devanagari R until most computers handle the Rupee symbol.
I'm no linguist (Score:2)
.. but my guess is that the Western "R"'s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather is the Devanagari "R".
Re:I'm no linguist (Score:5, Informative)
Your guess is mostly wrong - Latin "R" is derived from greek "P", which is itself derived from a Phoenician letter that looks like reversed "P", and ultimately from Egyptian. Devanagari is likely derived from Phoenician as well, but that's the most recent common point between the scripts, so they're very distant siblings.
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What we call "Greek alphabet" today is not the Greek alphabet, and it came in pretty late in the grand scheme of things. The older, indigenous stuff is Linear B [wikipedia.org].
As for Indians, they didn't copy it directly from Phoenicians, but it went a very roundabout way through the original Brahmic script. Again, this was a relatively late addition (later than Greek, actually). This one is more hypothetical, though there is strong evidence in favor.
Ultimately, it seems to be that Egyptians were simply one of the first n
Re:Euro (Score:5, Informative)
The old symbol for Rupee did not exist. You either said Re for Rupee (singular - but hardly used these days since the single Rupee is worth so little) or Rs for Rupees.
Side note: I remember in the old days on the IBM 1403 printers (running with the IBM 1401 machine) there was a symbol that used the space of one character and still printed Rs very close to each other. That was the closest that India ever came to having a symbol for the Rupee.
Until now.
The proposed symbol (which I believe looks very good) is symbolic of a few things:
1) The symbol looks like an R with the vertical leg removed and a horizontal line through it (much like the $ is simply an S with a vertical line | through it).
2) It is also the Hindi symbol for the first letter in the word Rupee in Hindi - with a line through it.
Hope this makes sense
Indian Rediff
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The proper abbreviation is Rp, and it has its own Unicode character, U+20A8. If Slashdot supported it, you could type it as the HTML character code ₨.
As far as the new symbol, it is a composite of the Devanagari letter Ra [wikipedia.org] (the first letter of the Hindi word for “rupee” in the Devanagari script) superimposed with the Roman letter R (the first letter of the word in the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration [wikipedia.org] scheme) without the vertical bar.
The word “rupee” itself
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While it's not 100% certain, probably not. Most likely, it comes from "Ps" for "peso", also known as the "Spanish Dollar".
Unicode does take its time... (Score:5, Informative)
... and it's for a good reason. That said, this kind of thing should have been coordinated *beforehand*, to avoid exactly this situation. The long lag between introducing the new symbol and actually being able to use it might kill it.
OTOH, the Unicode consortium approved several years ago the symbol for the Argentinian austral (""), a currency that ended up dying an inglorious (yet entirely deserved) death a few months afterwards.
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How so? This was a competition to come up with a new symbol. There were 5 designs that were on the final list and this symbol was the one that was just chosen.
I don't know how you can plan ahead for something like that.
Re:Unicode does take its time... (Score:5, Insightful)
How so? This was a competition to come up with a new symbol. There were 5 designs that were on the final list and this symbol was the one that was just chosen.
I don't know how you can plan ahead for something like that.
The competition was for the design of the glyph, not for the logical concept of the symbol. Getting the concept into Unicode is what could have been done beforehand, which would have made supporting the symbol fully just a matter of updating everyone's fonts...
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Unicode should already support it: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/20a8/index.htm [fileformat.info]
The delay seems to me to be in getting everybody to update their fonts. That's what I was referring to when I said I didn't know how you could plan for it.
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That's the "old" symbol. It represents the "rupee" currency as used in five different countries (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Mauritius).
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I don't know how you can plan ahead for something like that.
"We are starting the competition to come up with a new symbol; initiate your process to make accomodations for it, we will provide the ready glyph in 2 years."
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They could file for the Unicode concept in advance, then when the glyph design was ready the Unicode spec could be updated and fonts patched. As it is, they've got to wait for all of that to happen now.
Its nice to see (Score:4, Informative)
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Specifically, it's a Devanagari R with a horizontal line through the top, similar to the €, £ and ¥ signs. Usefully for most European language readers, in most fonts (and when not part of a conjunct character) it does look similar to a Latin R missing it's vertical stroke. Pronunciation is a soft R, similar to French.
What? Hindi is a fun language to learn.
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Specifically, it's a Devanagari R with a horizontal line through the top
Those letters look all Chinese n'junk.
Pronunciation is a soft R, similar to French.
And Boston.
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No, it wouldn't. That code point already has a well defined semantic meaning. If people start using that in the interim it will just make things harder for everyone.
My loony bun (Score:2, Funny)
counterfeiters (Score:5, Funny)
Isnt there already a Rupee sign? (Score:4, Interesting)
If there isn't, why is character 20A8 called "Rupee Sign" then?
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Here’s a link to those who want to see how it looks: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/20a8/index.htm [fileformat.info]
I hope they simply replace the glyph.
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Symbols in the digital age (Score:4, Interesting)
I admit that the first time I saw the Rupee symbol on the iPhone I thought I was looking at the symbol for the Yen. I wonder if the designers take into consideration that the symbols, when scaled way down, start to all look the same. Maybe that's the point?
Not specifically thinking about the Rupee, I would imagine that, in this day and age, a designer would know that the symbol/icon/logo/whatever needs to be recognizable at a potentially very small size.
Just ask Shigeru Miyamoto for help (Score:3, Funny)
Cool Symbol (Score:4, Interesting)
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happens all the time (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, apparently Thailand just passed a Thai Computer Crimes Act that requires IT providers to track who has viewed people blogs just in case some blogger has said something critical of the Thai government. So, if your company has people in Thailand (we do), and they can potentially post information on a blog, you've got some work to do.
Holy symbols, Batman! (Score:4, Funny)
Robin: The Riddler has escaped of Gotham! He left a note!
Note: 'Riddle me this, Batman - solve this equation: "?==$"'
Batman: Hmmm... It looks like he's gotten into the Indian money market.
Robin: However did you guess that, Batman?
Batman: You just have to overlap the ... what am I explaining this to you for? When we get to India, I am totally replacing you with a cheaper Indian model.
Robin: Holy takemyjarb, Batman!
Microsoft? (Score:2)
Once a new version of the standard, which has the code point for the rupee symbol, is released by the Unicode Consortium, Microsoft will start work to include it in the Windows operating system and other products, Parappil said. He did not specify the time it would take to include the changes. Users will not have to buy new software, but will likely receive downloadable updates to their existing software, he added.
Wow. Because, of course, all computers depend on microsoft software. And there are no devices outside ms or nokia ones. What a stupid article.
Also, why implement more symbols for this? It is absolutely stupid. The first currency sign ever was the Pesos sign ($). Yes, I know you guys know it as the 'dollar sign' but that is just plain wrong. The symbol was created originally in the 18th century to refer to the Spanish Peso.
The peso sign is recognized all around the world, and everyone knows it means money.
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The fact that $ is recognized in your country as a generic currency sign doesn't make it that way elsewhere, it's an artifact of you using that sign for your local currency. In Europe $ has a generally recognized, unambiguous meaning: US Dollars. It can mean Canadian Dollars if that is clear from the context but few would apply the sign to a currency t
Two years is nothing (Score:4, Funny)
TAFKAP == O(+> (Score:2)
I'm just happy to get ANY money. (Score:2)
When I get money, I always use the ":-)" set of characters. Why can't we use emoticons for currency symbols?
No worries (Score:2)
What Larks (Score:2)
The handwriting recognition on my tablet PC is mistaking a lot of punctuation as it is. The rupee symbol sure looks hard to confuse with some other symbol if written properly.
If handwriting recognition can work in far more contexts like math and programming, it would be a major driver for software to handle all the symbols properly, as people would find it really simple to input these symbols.
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Well, now every country will want their own currency symbol . . . it's a status symbol now.
"MY country has a symbol for our currency . . . where's YOURS?"
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Do you have a flag?
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+1 Obscure reference bonus (is it obscure? I think so...)
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Re:India is the 5th country... (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah! Where's our Canadian dollar symbol, eh?
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Where's our Canadian dollar symbol, eh?
Your parliament tried to get a couple of symbols passed but no one could agree that a Molsen's can or a middle finger would be a very good symbol.
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I think you mean Molson's. And the middle finger would not be the Canadian way.
The problem is that designing a dollar symbol that represents "it's not our fault, but we're sorry anyway" is a hard task.
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It is popular in Quebec only if you visit and assume everyone speaks english.
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http://i.am.ca/comp.html [i.am.ca]
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Re:India is the 5th country... (Score:4, Informative)
India is the 5th country...to get a symbol for its currency.
Ummm... The Unicode Code Charts [unicode.org] show many more than 5 country's currency symbols. And the currency code section has room for 23 more currency symbols.
Re:India is the 5th country... (Score:5, Informative)
1-Pound
2-US Dollars (and cents)
3-Euros
4-Israeli Shekel
5-Japanese Yen/Chinese Renminbi
Off the top of my head. Checking wikipedia, it looks like there are a bunch more
Korean Won -
Thai Baht -
Nigerian Naira -
(great, slashdot strips out the currency characters)
And dozens more...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_sign [wikipedia.org]
Re:India is the 5th country... (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot strips out (pretty-much) all non-ASCII characters. For a tech site, it's unforgivable.
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Yes - perhaps the slashcoders should read http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html [joelonsoftware.com] ?
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Slashdot strips out Unicode intentionally to prevent URL spoofing, and the use of various symbols that enable RTL mode, mirroring etc. It's still dumb, IMO, as there are much better ways to handle this (after all, the rest of the world lives with Unicode somehow...).
Re:India is the 5th country... (Score:4, Informative)
One gets the feeling that the devs simply didn't want to actually look at how Unicode works and which characters are safe (and how to test for them efficiently). Yes, you could probably use similar-looking characters to spoof URLs but doesn't Slashdot show the domain names of links next to the links themselves for exactly that reason?
It's a bit ridiculous to not be able to use technical symbols, the IPA or even the Euro symbol because the site wants to protect itself from control characters.
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€
Re:India is the 5th country... (Score:5, Informative)
A few currency marks work if you're posting in (Slashdot's brain-damaged idea of) HTML, and you use the standard HTML character entity encoding for them:
Pound: £
Euro: €
Yen: ¥
Of course, HTML 4.01's entity list [intuitive.com] only has a few currency marks available to begin with, including WTF ever a "general currency mark" is, but Slashcode can't be troubled with those other than the few listed up above.
Re:India is the 5th country... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it replaces a select few with their HTML character code equivalents, then strips out everything else so that it is 8-bit text. For some reason it also strips out unrecognised HTML character codes (even if they should render a recognised character, such as A).
Some of the ones which I know of that it recognises: a variety of accented letters (e.g. â ü ý), en- and em-dashes (– and —), Euro and Pound currency signs (€ and £), basic fractions (¼, ½, ¾), curly quotation marks (‘ ’ “ ”). However it irritatingly does not recognise the degree symbol (°) or the horizontal ellipsis (…). The angle brackets ( < > ) typically should be encoded as their character code equivalents to avoid them being interpreted as HTML (a lone < will be stripped out to avoid breaking the HTML whereas a lone > is rendered normally). Of course, the ampersand (&) does not usually need to be encoded but if it is necessary it can be encoded as a character code (&), and the quotation mark (") never really needs to be encoded in Slashdot postings but you could if you wanted (").
To see the encoding of the characters in my post, press Reply and then Quote Parent.
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And they have a plan.
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I disagree. Stating an amount of money is an important and common enough thing that it deserves its own symbol. It also prevents confusion in some cases, e.g. what if you're buying a 15R resistor?
And € is great.
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Is the symbol for "Ohm" R in India? I think you are the confused one. And so is the guy selling resistors in units of "R".
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I'm not confused. In addition to denoting a resistance by Ohms, they are often labelled like this:
1R2 = 1.2 Ohm
1k2 = 1.2 kOhm
1M2 = 1.2 MOhm
(i.e. the letter replaces the decimal point and also indicates the SI prefix.)
And so on, so 1500R would be 1500 Ohm (although you'd probably use 1k5).
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If you're in that country, rupee usage should be common enough to be assumed.
If you're far away from that country, chances are you don't have any idea what the hell that symbol is. And being a symbol, it's almost impossible to look up.
Really, this will help people on the borders of the country, or who interact with India all of the time. It's a nice shorthand for 15 R Indian.
To everyone else, it's one more confusing Kanji they will never be able to look up.
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And being a symbol, it's almost impossible to look up
Oh? Just copy & paste to Google search.
If you want to see confusing - guess the currency / country which I'm using here: $.
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And being a symbol, it's almost impossible to look up.
To everyone else, it's one more confusing Kanji they will never be able to look up.
Do we assume they do not have access to Google, and the ability to type the character? Eg query google for "what is "...
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How the hell did you make that symbol work on Slashdot?
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Re:Why use symbols? (Score:4, Funny)
1.00$USD
1.00$CAN
1.00$AU
Alternate ways of writing the above:
1.00 freedom dollar
1.00 dollar, eh?
You call that a dollar? THAT's a dollar.
Pokemon dollar (Score:2)
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