Franc currency symbol

Ermin Međedović
Ermin Međedović Posts: 81
in Technique and Theory
So, ligatured Fr or an F with a line through it? Until now I had Fr ligature for the franc sign in my fonts, but as there are more countries in Europe and most of francophone Africa that use francs I'm just not sure anymore.

Comments

  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    Favor the countries that still use it.
  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    edited July 2017
    Fooling around...
    But this doesn't cut it, because to me a bar is key in a currency symbol.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,126
    edited July 2017
    I tried to find some information on this. I found https://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/fdsspec/monetary.aspx but that just shows that both forms are in use, without supplying any information on whether different countries using the Franc as a currency unit have different preferences among the possible symbols.

    Some image results suggested that the F with bar symbol was specifically for the Swiss franc, but the Wikipedia article on the Franc described it as a symbol for the French Franc. Thus, I suppose it's simply a very recent symbol for the French Franc that was also adopted by at least some other countries using a Franc as a currency unit - the Fr symbol being the one that one will see on old manual typewriters and so on.
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,992
    Check Windows keyboard layouts of the nations that use the Franc. If there aren’t local keyboard layouts in default Windows installs that include the Franc than it’s probably safe to assume that they use Fr. I’m basing this on how Arubans supposedly have ƒ as a currency symbol but use the abbreviation WSG instead.
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    edited July 2017
    Well every currency has a three-letter code, which is preferred for uses that need to be unambiguous. But every currency also has a symbol which is generally more natural for users in terms of typing, reading, and certainly writing.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,126
    James Puckett said:
    I’m basing this on how Arubans supposedly have ƒ as a currency symbol but use the abbreviation WSG instead.
    Maybe they just have trouble buying computers with Aruban keyboards, because the market is too small for any computer maker to produce them at a decent price?

    I'll have to look up photos of market stalls in Aruba to see if they refuse to use their symbol when doing handwriting.

    John Savard
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
  • Denis Moyogo Jacquerye
    Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Posts: 191
    The F with a bar was a proposed symbol for the French franc (the currency of France before the euro). 
    Édouard Balladur, the French State Minister of Economy, Finances and Privatisation had published Un symbole pour le franc in 1988.


    The proposed symbol ended up in Unicode, but was never actually used. It probably ended up in Unicode because it would have been silly to have a major currency symbol not supported by computers when it was supposed to become official. Instead, we have a silly symbol that was never used.

    My guess is the Fr ligature found in some fonts for this character is just there to mimic the usual Fr (F+r) character sequence. I’d be surprised if there was any conventional use for it.
    The symbols F and FRF (or abbreviations like fr or Fr), were commonly used for the French franc. For other countries where the currency is (or was) called franc, there is still no evidence of conventional use of this character, the symbols made of normal letters like F, Fr or more formal one like BEF, CFA, CHF, etc. are used instead.
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    edited July 2017
    I like it.

    >  Instead, we have a silly symbol that was never used.

    Never say never. Alliances come and go.
  • Denis Moyogo Jacquerye
    Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Posts: 191
    That sentence was meant to go with the previous one.



    By itself, it’s just silly ;-P
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,126
    Of course, though, the symbol shown as proposed is different from the one now found in Unicode. The placement of serifs on the bars makes it look like it is turning thumbs down on the currency...

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