Eszett
Michael Everson
everson at evertype.com
Sat Jul 11 10:26:45 CEST 2009
On 11 Jul 2009, at 07:31, Martin J. Dürst wrote:
> Hello Shawn,
>
> I think doing a cross-check on whether we really did the right thing
> with ß (eszett) is a good idea.
All right. Somebody please summarize it because I have been letting
all of these mazillions of messages go by.
Ah, Shawn summarized.
>> My understanding of the situation (I’m going to oversummerize, and
>> no, I’m not going to go re-read all the eszett archives, I only
>> have a week before vacation ☺)
>>
>>
>> · The working group decided that mappings were bad (this thread is
>> eszett, not mappings).
In layman's terms, what is this, please?
>>
>> · Germany realized that with no mappings they’d have an orphaned
>> letter, eszett, and they really want to be able to type fußball at
>> the UI level.
Orphaned? What does this mean in plain English?
>> · The working group agreed that interfering with fußball was
>> unhealthy and so eszett ß was added.
Interfering? OK, I really do need a plain-text summary without
assumptions.
>> · A tremendous amount of discussion reintroduced mappings.
Yes, I watched it flow by.
>> · German feedback indicated that mappings were solved the eszett
>> case.
German? From the German National Body? From some German? And what was
the solution?
>> · The eszett continues to remain a breaking change from
>> IDNA2003.
How so? Please make it plain.
>> There are some words in German (like fußball) that SHOULD be
>> spelled with an eszett. There are even a few words that become
>> homographs if the eszett isn’t used.
>> It should also be pointed out that in other German speaking
>> locales, the ss is preferred,
>
> ss is preferred in Switzerland. ß is preferred in Austria.
Yes, but that's orthogonal to the discussion. We may ignore
Switzerland, since they won't be using the ß anyway.
>> and even in Germany it is used as an alternate spelling in some
>> contexts.
>
> What contexts?
Andreas Stötzner has written a great deal on this subject. Martin,
have you read this? I can supply some links if you have not.
>> SS or ss is often used instead of ß for stylistic reasons if
>> nothing else.
>
> SS is always used when upper case is needed. Can you explain where you
> think that ss is used for 'stylistic reasons'?
This isn't true, Martin. SS is *not* "always" used when the upper-case
is needed. That is why LATIN LETTER CAPITAL SHARP S has been encoded
in the standard.
I think if one doesn't take ss and SS and ß and ẞ (the last is the
capital sharp s, available in Everson Mono which I use for e-mail even
though you may not see it) all into account in IDN one is making a big
mistake.
> What do you mean by 99% linguistically equivalent? In the new German
> orthography, the difference between ß and ss is a very clear phonetic
> difference (long preceeding vowel for ß, short preceeding vowel for
> ss).
Yes, and that's one reason people have argued for a capital ß.
Compare: Massemaße, MASSEMAẞE (with MASSEMASSE)
Compare: Maßstab MAẞSTAB (with MASSSTAB)
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
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