Re:UppercasevariantofU+00DFLATINSMALLLETTERSHARPS("Germansharps","=?iso-8859-1?q?=DF")

From: Rick McGowan (rick@unicode.org)
Date: Wed Feb 16 2005 - 17:56:42 CST

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    Mark Shoulson wrote,

    > Which therefore raises the more general question: what with all these
    > "immutable" (stable) characteristics, what's Unicode to do in a case
    > where the usage really did completely change? Or if the initial Unicode
    > decision was, in fact, completely wrong/mistaken? Apparently, German
    > really *does* need to be able to use ß as a capital letter (whether as a
    > separate letter or caseless).

    This is indeed something of an interesting case.

    In the meeting, the UTC seemed to feel that this was a typographic matter,
    and the proposal paper itself was the evidence UTC used to reach that
    conclusion.

    Immutability really means in this case, if an upper-case were encoded, as
    it could possibly be at some time in the future, the encoding would cause
    one set of problems or another. Pick your poison! ;-)

    In a case like this, ultimately, any overtures for change would have to be
    made by the German national body, and no other. They really do "own" this
    problem, with its enormous legacy implications. My belief is that neither
    the UTC nor WG2 would step in to encode such a character unless the German
    national body was shown to be in prior agreement, and they are willing to
    live with various problems created by the decades of legacy use. (And,
    then, they would be the ones making the proposal.)

    Asmus's suggestion of a variation sequence could be a reasonable avenue to
    discuss if the issue persists in causing itches. It has few drawbacks or
    legacy implications.

    Speaking personally only of course, not in any official capacity,

            Rick



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