From: Andrew West (andrewcwest@gmail.com)
Date: Fri May 04 2007 - 04:43:07 CST
On 04/05/07, Frank Ellermann <nobody@xyzzy.claranet.de> wrote:
>
> I'll see to it to make it true. I'm pretty sure that Duden and/or
> the German government will find a way to inform me when they intend
> to "invent" new characters for my language, and that didn't happen
> in this case.
>
Well you obviously haven't taken a look at the front cover of Der
Große Duden (Leipzig, 1957, 1960, 1964) -- Figs.9 and 10 in
<http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/N3227.pdf>
> If some "script kiddies" (pun intended) want to use "upper case ß",
> Shavian, or similar artwork it's fine, but they're not free to say
> that it's a real "upper case ß", common practice, or in any remote
> sense a desirable invention.
>
Have you read the proposal ? The character is being proposed in order
to represent examples of usage in existing texts -- whether you like
it or not some people have used an uppercase form of the letter, and
there is a need to represent texts which use this uppercase form.
There is no suggestion of any change to existing orthographic practice
for German in the encoding of this character.
> It would break each and every existing software supporting German,
> it would cause a damage in the order of the W2K upgrade (limited
> to one language, but still), it's just madness.
>
This is not true. Lower case sharp s will continue to upper case to
"SS", existing implementations will be unaffected.
Andrew
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri May 04 2007 - 04:46:39 CST