From: John Hudson ([email protected])
Date: Fri May 04 2007 - 15:20:42 CST
Asmus wrote:
> The character in question is an interesting case, since it represents an
> orthography that is at variance with the 'official' rules, which require
> that ß in uppercase is represented by SS. In a rule-oriented culture
> like the German one, the documented and continued existence of such a
> deliberate variation from standard orthography is an interesting
> phenomenon.
I think it is a testimony to the fundamental illogic of a bicameral writing system
containing two different lowercase elements being mapped to the same uppercase elements.
The variation from standard orthography persists, despite the evident failure over more
than a hundred years to affect orthographic reform, because it makes more sense than the
standard orthography. The ß should have an uppercase equivalent. It is crazy that one does
not exist. Apart from fulfilling the basic structural logic of a bicameral alphabet, just
think how much simpler so many aspects of German text processing would be if there were
such a character with a standard case mapping to the lowercase ß!
The irony of the recent exchanges is not lost on me:
On the one hand, we have Marnen Laibow-Koser, who thinks that this character should *not*
exist, but that it does, and therefore needs to be encoded.
On the other hand, we have me, who thinks that this character *should* exist, but that it
does not, and therefore does not need to be encoded.
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Gulf Islands, BC [email protected] We say our understanding measures how things are, and likewise our perception, since that is how we find our way around, but in fact these do not measure. They are measured. -- Aristotle, Metaphysics
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