Somme additional information
1. The Umlaut
In German the supralinear e may be used as a variation of the diaeresis above a, o, and u. Though it is old fashioned, indeed, it is still understandable, and might be used for invitation cards and the like. I donât know a modern font with it, but I got at least one book, in which the supralinear e is used. It was published in 1830.
The umlaut:
In old Swedish the umlaut above a, o and u (u only in German names and similar) was displayed as an "e" above the characters in Fraktur, and (usually) as two dots above a, o and u in Antiqua (except at the time when books began to be in Antiqua only, where both variants were used in both Fraktur and Antiqua).
The diÃresis:
In old Swedish the diÃresis above y was displayed as two dots in Fraktur. "Ã" was at that point used in the same way as "ij", which was often used for a long "i". The spelling was free, and you could decide yourself if you wanted to write "ij" or "Ã" in a particular word. The diÃresis above any letter in Antiqua was generally written as two dots.
In old Swedish loan words and many names were written in Antiqua, while the rest was written in Fraktur. Thus one should not expect characters not used in normal Swedish words in Fraktur.
Thus, U+0364 was equivalent to U+0308 when U+0308 was representing an umlaut, but not when U+0308 was representing a diÃresis because U+0308 had two contextually different display forms.
I have not seen the e-above in any Swedish books published after the 19th century.
Stefan
