On 5/29/2018 2:46 PM, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
I very much dislike the approach that just for the sake of
`simplistic standardization for uppercase' the use if `ẞ' should be
enforced in German. [...]
Hmm, don't see anyone calling for that in this discussion.
Well, I hear an implicit ”Great, there is now an `ẞ' character! Let's
use it as the uppercase version of `ß' everywhere so that this nasty
German peculiarity is finally gone.“
The ALL-CAPS "SS" really has little to recommend it, intrinsically. It
is de-facto a fall-back; one that competed with "SZ" as used in
telegrams (while they still were a thing). Not being able to know how to
hyphenate MASSE without knowing the meaning of the word is also not
something that I consider a "benefit".
Uppercase forms for `ß' have been kicking around in fonts for a long
time as was documented around the time that the character was encoded.
It is possible mainly because running text in ALL CAPS is indeed
uncommon (and in the time of Fraktur was effectively not viable because
the Fraktur capitals don't lend themselves to it. (If SS had ever
occurred in Title-Case, I doubt it would have survived as long, other
than the "Swiss solution" of making it the only form, also in lower case).
Saving an uppercase form for a non-initial letter was a godsend on
typewriters -- adding to the factors that made the "SS" solution
acceptable. But sign writers, type designers and typesetters did not
find it so universally attractive - also documented exhaustively.
With changing environment (starting with influence from Anglo-Saxon use
of type and not ending with the way the character is treated in relation
to phonetics) I've been expecting so see usage evolving; and not
necessarily driven by software engineers.
A./
