The Euro Sign and other Interesting Entities

Introduction to the forum software and its feature. You can use this for test postings. This is not a boating forum
jimh
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The Euro Sign and other Interesting Entities

Postby jimh » Fri Jan 08, 2016 10:31 am

Testing for the Euro Sign or European currency mark using an HTML entity encoded as a BBcode item using the [char] BBcode tags:

The price was €299.

The BBcode for this (shown with extra spaces to prevent encoding) is


[ c h a r ] e u r o [ / c h a r ]

According to Wikipedia, the Euro Sign precedes the amount. The preferences for a space between the Euro sign and the amount of the currency varies by style guide, but the major newspapers seem to prefer no space.

Also, let's try entering the Euro currency sign as a keyboarded character. For MacOS it is Option-Shift-2. Here goes:

The price was €299.

For more hints on keyboard character entries, see the Wikipedia article, subheading "Entry Methods." If confused by the reference to the AltGr key, see another article about the AltGr key.

We can also use the [ c h a r ] BBcode to add other HTML entities, like the copyright mark and accented letters:

Copyright© 2016; all rights reserved by James Hébert

Very interesting stuff!

jimh
Posts: 11659
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:25 pm
Location: Michigan, Lower Peninsula
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Re: The Euro Sign and other Interesting Entities

Postby jimh » Sun Jan 10, 2016 9:10 am

For more on the Euro see Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro

ASIDE: the value of 1-Euro in terms of how many US-dollars it takes to buy 1-Euro has been quite variable over the last ten years. At the peak of the Euro value, it took about $1.60 to buy 1-Euro. At the moment the value of the Euro has fallen (or the value of the dollar increased, if you like) so that you can buy 1-Euro for just a little more than one dollar.

Consider the effect on the price of a Boston Whaler boat. If a particular boat cost $100,000 in US-dollars, at one point a European buyer would have only paid about €62,500 for it. Today, the price for the European currency buyer would be more like €95,000. That is an increase in the price of a Boston Whaler boat in Euro-currency of 32.5-percent. I suspect this will reduce exports of Boston Whaler boats to Europe.

jimh
Posts: 11659
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:25 pm
Location: Michigan, Lower Peninsula
Contact:

Re: The Euro Sign and other Interesting Entities

Postby jimh » Sat Feb 20, 2016 9:40 am

To use the [ c h a r ] tag the enclosing element must be the name of an character entity, not the entity code itself. For example, the consider the copyright symbol. To use it with the [ c h a r ] tag, you use the entity name "copy" and not the entity code "©"

The copyright symbol, entity name "copy"= ©

You can find the names of the character entities at https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html

Here are a few that might be useful:

The lower case Greek letter pi, entity name "pi" = π

The multiplication dot operator, entity name "sdot" = ⋅

The superscript 2, entity name "sup2" = ²

Example: The area enclosed by a circle of radius r is equal to π⋅r²