German sharp S uppercase mapping
Ivan Panchenko
ivanpan3 at gmail.com
Mon Dec 2 05:18:08 CST 2024
For some perspective: The sharp s is made of the long s, which just
corresponds to a capital round S in uppercase*; this is why the
capital sharp S is not uncontroversial. To this day, “ẞ” is rather
exotic and people usually write “SS” or (non-official) “ß”. While I
like the capital letter, it may not be Unicode’s responsibility to
promote it. (* Though the Ehmcke antiqua does have a capital long S,
which resembles an integral sign!)
Daniel Buncic via Unicode <unicode at corp.unicode.org>:
> Remember, the new
> wording that expresses a preference for ẞ over SS (or at least treats
> them equally) was only published this year, with the new Duden edition
> (which is what people actually read rather than the official rules)
> coming out in August, just 3½ months ago.
This is how Duden currently explains it:
“Bei Verwendung von Großbuchstaben steht traditionellerweise SS für ß.
In manchen Schriften gibt es aber auch einen entsprechenden
Großbuchstaben; seine Verwendung ist fakultativ ‹§ 25 E3›.”
“In Dokumenten kann bei Namen aus Gründen der Eindeutigkeit auch bei
Großbuchstaben anstelle von Doppel-s bzw. großem Eszett das kleine ß
verwendet werden.”
So not exactly prominently featured (“in some fonts”). And again, I
find it highly unlikely that the Rat ever intended to make a
recommendation here, given that they do not make one regarding
“Geografie”/“Geographie” etc.
More information about the Unicode
mailing list