From: verdy_p (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Fri Sep 11 2009 - 19:01:01 CDT
"Karl Pentzlin"
> Independently of this, there are Caucasian languages (at least Udi)
> which used the long s as a different letter (when using the Latin script in
> the 1920/1030s), They even developed an uppercase form of it.
They are not alone. In African berbere langues the long s (shaped as a longer esh) was also developed with a
capital of it (borrowing the Greek capital sigma for it). This letter pair became the current Esh pair, so there's
in it the needed difference with the normal Latin s.
I don't think that the long s should ever be used, if its capital is not the capital Latin S. For me, even it it
looks like the baseline lowerse s, or like the small esh with a descender, the letter should be encoded so that
the effecitve difference with s/S is preserved consistently. Then you can use fonts that will present italic small
long s like an italic small esh (in languages that don't use esh as a distinct letter), but it will still be a
long s and its capital will still be a Latin capital S.
That's why we have other variants of S and Z letters, like Esh, Ej, ... which come with their distinct casing
letters pairs, which can be differenciated each time it is needed.
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