AW: AW: AW: AW: sharp s (Eszett)

[Georg Ochsner]

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Harald Tveit Alvestrand
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 12. März 2008 04:28
 
> --On Tuesday, March 11, 2008 22:44:46 +0100 Georg Ochsner
> <g.ochsner at revolistic.com> wrote:
> 
> > Can you explain for which applications in particular the
> > case-insensitivity for domain names is essential, and why? Can such
> > applications make use of the new uppercase sharp S in Unicode 5.1?
> >
> We have trained all users since the birth of the DNS to expect that
> "FreeNet.de", "freenet.de" and "FREENET.DE" all point to the same host.
> 
> I (speaking from my Norwegian context) think it's essential that the
> same
> thing be true for "Ålesund", "ÅLESUND" and "ålesund" too; that's the
> general "application" of "humans type a domain name and expect it to
> behave
> like domain names they're used to".

As long as humans are acting (Germans) they will not be confused, because 1) they know, that there is no upper case sharp S (they can live without it in daily life and will live without it in domain names) and 2) there is not even a possibility to enter something like a uppercase sharp S on their keyboard. What about this:

family-weiss.de, Family-Weiss.de and FAMILY-WEISS.DE  point to the website of family Weiss.
Family-weiß.de and Family-Weiß.de point to the website of family Weiß. A third uppercases variation of this domain cannot be entered, because of the lack of an (key for an) uppercase sharp S, so what? Both families have their own domain and website. I think this is fine. BTW both surnames are common in Germany and there are other popular examples like Groß and Gross etc.

It is obviously strange to foreigners that there is no uppercase sharp S. This is simply because it never appears at the beginning of a word. So why should IDNA force mapping of lowercase sharp s to ss just because of that. As someone said before here, "information gets lost". And I would like to add "important". Every German and Austrian child learns how to use the sharp s, it's perfectly natural.

Best regards to Norway!
	Georg