Keyboards, handsets to help popularise Rupee symbol

The rupee sign, fresh from joining a select club of unique currency identities, is poised to invade the software lexicon and squeeze into computer keyboards as well as cellphones, a shift that will help ratchet up its global acceptance swiftly.

Software vendors, including Microsoft Corp, are ready to tweak operating systems to make a small but critical change to recognise a new symbol in their software vocabulary. Computer users the world over will then be able to produce the rupee symbol with a keystroke or combination of keystrokes.

“Having a symbol for the rupee will take up less memory,” said Satish Mohan, director of software engineering at Red Hat (India), which distributes the Linux OS.

   **Details Here.