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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