Re: The letter Sharp S and the English language

[Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch>]

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In article <5150a9f2$0$6567$9b4e6d93@newsspool4.arcor-online.net>,
 Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> wrote:

> On 25.03.13 16:23, Adam Beneschan wrote:
> > On Saturday, March 23, 2013 2:22:26 PM UTC-7, Georg Bauhaus wrote:
> >> In case you remember a heated discussions of what � is,
> >> whether it is an S-Z ligature or an S-S, and how to (not)
> >> downcase "ACCESS", more evidence comes from Ireland of 1759,
> >> in the signature of Arthur Guinne�,
> >>
> >> http://home.arcor.de/bauhaus/Ada/GUINNESS.jpg
> > 
> > That pretty clearly looks like two separate letters to me, although the two 
> > s's are in different styles.  But it isn't a ligature.  I'm not sure what 
> > your point is since I don't remember the original thread very well.
> 
> I'm investigating how Unicode enabled Ada can help me "export"
> street names to Switzerland. Thus,
> 
>   To_Upper ("Xyz-Stra�e");  -- String or Wide_String
> 
> What interests me is whether or not this might or might not work in the
> future, i.e. with Ada 2012, in the light of recent developments of
> ISO/IEC 10646:
> 
> First, you'd typically not be writing '�' in Switzerland and instead
> replace every occurrence with "ss". That's for both lower case and
> upper case. (And also when using small caps). So, To_Upper's definition
> won't help.

Indeed, Swiss German keyboards do not have '�' (which was a real pain 
when doing a German language course on Windows which insisted I used it).

> 
> But! Since Ada 2005 there are two new twists. In 2008, ISO/IEC 10646
> has published an official upper case character for '�', U+1E9E. And in
> 2010, official spelling (read: government; "amtlich") requires U+1E9E
> in geographical names. These include street names.
> 
> http://141.74.33.52/stagn/Portals/0/101125_TopR5.pdf

That's a useful document.  The last paragraph on Page 10 might mean you 
need to clean up existing data:

"NEW: Due to the new regulation of German spelling the letter � is after 
a short (stressed) vowel now replaced by ss. The letter � remains after 
a long vowel or a diphthong."

<snip>

> ('�' will thus continue to cause problems originating in web based form
> entry fields and elsewhere, I'm almost sure.

Yes I would expect problems with web based forms. On OS X I can get � 
via option-s, but on Windows that is alt-0223, not something I expect a 
typical end user to remember.

> Just one out of many
> experiences: a major fruit company's customer invoices have consistently
> shown what looks like junk HTML right after "Stra" in my address for years.)

I had an example the other day in a Captcha which decided from my IP 
address that I needed German when viewing a UK based website.  I wish 
that if they are going to do that they would get it right...

http://www.sture.ch/images/scrambled-umlauts.png

-- 
Paul Sture