From: John Hudson (john@tiro.ca)
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 tiro@tiro.com 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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