CEN/TC 304 - Character Set Technology

This European Standard specifies the order between two character strings composed of characters from the Modern European Scripts (MES) collection of ISO/IEC 10646:2003 or subsets of it.
NOTE   Collection 283 Modern European Scripts (MES) of ISO/IEC 10646:2003 was originally specified in CEN Workshop Agreement 13873:2000 Multilingual European Subsets of ISO/IEC 10646 as Multilingual European Subset Number 3 and was subsequently incorporated as a collection in Annex A of ISO/IEC 10646:2003 alongside its sister collections MES-1 and MES-2.
The ordering rules specified in this European Standard are only applicable for lists of data in more than one European language and when this data is intended for a multicultural audience. They complement existing national standards or practices in the field.

Add the Euro Sign into the standardised OCR-B repertoire.

This Technical Specificationspecifies the graphic char-ac-ter repertoires and their single-byte coding, which are available for use for information inter-change between information processing systems and for use within such systems, in the scripts that are commonly used by the members of CEN/CENELEC and the Institutions of the European Union and the European Free Trade Association.
This Technical Specificationdoes not specify the interchange of information using a telematic service. The character repertoire and the coding used by a telematic service are defined by the specification of that service. The transmission of information based on the specifications of this Technical Specificationusing a telematic service may necessitate an adaptation of the number of characters of a repertoire (repertoire transformation function) or a change to the coding (code transformation function).

Multilingual fallbacks of European characters, applicable in multilingual pan-European environment. Harmonising work of all bodies dealing with standardised fallbacks.

This European Standard specifies the graphic character repertoire and control functions relevant for information interchange via Telex services. It is intended to be used with and identified within other European functional standards that specify strings of coded characters for interchange of coded information between Information Processing Systems via Telex services. This standard specifies two alternative options of graphic character repertoires: Option A for Latin characters and Option B for Latin and Greek characters.

This CEN report gives information on (the European national keyboards) keyboards used for European languages and shows how national bodies are using the international keyboard standards. It also considers common existing approaches on the future of  keyboards and informs on the future international standardization..
The scope for the project according to CEN/TC 304 N872 "A meeting on the Keyboard PT in Nov 1998" is the following:
EUROPEAN KEYBOARDS. The deliverable is a CEN report giving guidance on the application of international keyboard standards in Europe. It will map how national bodies are using international keyboard standards, what national standards there are and give guidance to common approaches. The team shall, in contact with ISO, investigate the future of keyboards. Special attention shall be given to the Euro Sign on keyboards.
The report addresses this scope as follows:
How national bodies are using international keyboard standards and guidance to common approaches is given in clause 5 and Annex 3
National standards are listed in Annex 2
The future of keyboard standardization is discussed in section 6
The euro sign on keyboards is discussed in clause 5.4.
Clause 4 in this report gives information on international standards for keyboards. Of these ISO/IEC 9995 and ISO 9241-4 are most commonly used. (For exact references see clause 7)
Clause 5 gives common information on the use of these standards and on the euro sign on keyboards.
Clause 6 gives some information on future standardization.
Annex 2 gives information from the National Bodies on keyboard standards used in their countries.
Annex 3 gives some more information on the layout of a number of keyboards for European languages.
The report is meant to give guidance to many parties:
· A country which decides to make its own keyboard standard may use it as background information on what other countries have standardized.
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The technical scope of this guide is primarily limited to official character set standards promulgated by ISO/IEC and CEN, as opposed to official telecommunications standards and manufacturer standards. However, an overview of all types of standards is given in section 7. The guide furthermore concentrates on European issues; thus character set standards for non-European languages are not covered. The guide is mainly intended as an introduction for people who need to familiarise themselves with the concept of character sets and their coding.

This Technical Report describes a general model of the conceptual stages involved in the interchange of data composed of graphic characters between two end users. It identifies those aspects of this communication process that are amenable to further standardization and it provides terminology that permits such standards to specifiy their roles within this model. It is not intended as a guide to the implementation of such standards as in many cases the conceptual stages do not correspond to the practical stages involved in an efficient implementation.

This CEN report specifies the sequence to be established by alphabetical ordering of multilingual data composed of characters comprised in the Multilingual European Subset Number 3 or subsets thereof. This collection is defined in CWA 13783.
NOTE The Multilingual European Subset Number 3 is usually termed MES-3. A predecessor was known as the Extended European Subset (EES). Cf. ENV 1973:1995. MES-3 covers the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, and Georgian letters needed in European data interchange as well as symbols which are needed in Europe. MES-3 comes in two versions: MES-3A is an open collection whereas the fixed collection MES-3B is a snapshot of MES-3A against the repertoire of ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993 with amendments 1 to 31. A CEN workshop agreement on the Multilingual European Subsets of ISO/IEC 10646 has been published as CEN ISSS CWA 13873.
The ordering rules given here are only intended for data in more than one European language. They are not meant to influence, let alone replace existing national standards or practices.
The main part of this CEN report specifies letter-by-letter ordering of character strings. Informative Annex A presents equivalent information in a more readily accessible way. Informative Annex B deals with word-by-word ordering as a special form of ordering with multiple keys. Informative Annex C explains the use of further ordering criteria. Informative Annex D presents a widely used alternative to the main part, namely the amalgamation of several scripts in one index via implicit transliteration. Informative Annex F, finally, presents the information inherent in section 6 of the body of this CEN report in a formally equivalent, though condensed, form.
Following the practice of ISO/IEC 14651 characters are referenced as UXXXX where X stands for any hexadecimal digit and refers to the value of that character in ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000.This convention is used throughout this CEN report.

Multilingual ordering of European characters, applicable in mutlilingual pan-European environment. Harmonising work of all bodies dealing with standardized mutlilingual ordering.