Consensus Call on Latin Sharp S and Greek Final Sigma

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Mon Nov 30 11:11:24 CET 2009


On 30 Nov 2009, at 09:51, Vint Cerf wrote:

> the distinction is not between mapping.
>
> the distinction is between allowing or not allowing these two  
> characters as PVALID.
>
> Mapping is not part of the IDNA2008 proposed standard. The mapping  
> document and other references to mapping in rationale are not  
> normative. Mapping may very well occur in consequence of contextual  
> user interface treatments but such handling is outside the scope of  
> the base standard.

I do have a question, Vint about the casing of PVALID ß.

pass.alvestrand.no will be different from paß.alvestrand.no  
(evidently, seeing by the consensus).

Will PASS.ALVESTRAND.NO also be distinct from PAẞ.ALVESTRAND.NO?

I notice that the properties are:

1E9E;LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S;Lu;0;L;;;;;N;;;;00DF;
00DF;LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S;Ll;0;L;;;;;N;;;;;

Compare these with

021C;LATIN CAPITAL LETTER YOGH;Lu;0;L;;;;;N;;;;021D;
021D;LATIN SMALL LETTER YOGH;Ll;0;L;;;;;N;;;021C;;021C

01F7;LATIN CAPITAL LETTER WYNN;Lu;0;L;;;;;N;;;;01BF;
01BF;LATIN LETTER WYNN;Ll;0;L;;;;;N;;;01F7;;01F7

This is significant because in Germany there have been rules for a  
long time now, used in German passports and the Personalausweis, and  
also the German Post office -- the recommendation there has been to  
write WEIß if the lowercase is Weiß. That's not WEIẞ, but since the  
capital ẞ is finding its way into core fonts now, and since keyboard  
drivers are being made to facilitate input of the capital ẞ, it seems  
to me likely that if ß is PVALID it should (at least in IDNA) be  
properly mapped to ẞ.

See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Großes_ß and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital 
_ß

I don't quite understand the ramifications of the UTC decision to have

00DF;LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S;Ll;0;L;;;;;N;;;;;

instead of

00DF;LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S;Ll;0;L;;;;;N;;;1E9E;;1E9E

but I think that in this context this is going to cause trouble if ß  
≠ ẞ.
That is, FUẞBALL.DE should = fußball.de = fUßBaLl.De = FuẞbAlL.dE

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/



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