SS symbol -- was: Re: Uppercase ß is coming? (U+1E9E)

From: Marnen Laibow-Koser (marnen@marnen.org)
Date: Tue May 08 2007 - 11:10:31 CDT

  • Next message: Mark Davis: "Re: Ranges/blocks ; font lookup by range"

    On May 8, 2007, at 8:43 AM, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:

    > Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
    >
    >> Oddly enough -- and I know this may be off topic -- I think the SS
    >> symbol should maybe make it into Unicode. Nazi-era German
    >> typewriters tend to have it as a glyph of its own, on a separate
    >> key. So it may be needed for proper encoding of Nazi-era
    >> documents. I wonder.
    > I think it's been suggested, and given the importance given the
    > glyphs during the Nazi era I think you are correct. Typewriters and
    > typefaces in Germany had to support the symbol, it *was* a
    > character in existence at the time, and Unicode supports historic
    > characters.

    Exactly.

    >
    > When this has been suggested, the answer usually given is that this
    > is to be considered a pair of (variant) U+16CB RUNIC LETTER SIGEL
    > LONG-BRANCH-SOL S (ᛋ). I think that was the rune suggested.

    That may well be correct. It does square with the glyph's origin,
    and it may make sense to encode it as an optional ligature.
    >
    > Similarly, years ago, I noted that I thought—and still think—
    > that the Nazi swastika should be encoded, for similar historic
    > reasons. It was not just an important symbol of the times, but I
    > seem to think it found its way into text uses as well (as a
    > dingbat, to be sure, but still used).
    [...]

    How about MANJI and a variant selector? That should do the trick,
    and do so more elegantly than a separate code point.

    Best,

    -- 
    Marnen Laibow-Koser
    marnen@marnen.org
    


    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue May 08 2007 - 11:12:05 CDT