Uppercase germandbls is coming to Unicode

[twardoch]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Andreas Stötzner and the German DIN committee submitted a proposal to the ISO 10646 working group that uppercase ß (germandbls, eszett, sharp s) should be added to Unicode/ISO 10646.

U+1E9E is the envisioned codepoint.

The proposal can be viewed at:
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/N3227.pdf

It is important to note that according to the proposal, even after adding this character to Unicode, the standard uppercase mapping for "ß" will remain "SS". This encoding effort is not about changing existing application or even spelling rules -- it is simply an effort to encode a character to be used in an "alternate" spelling which some people use (and currently have problems with properly encoding the text). It is an observed fact that "uppercase ß" exists, even if the official rules don't envision it.

I believe it is an interesting effort, and it would be reasonable to discuss what the best possible shape for the new character would be.

Some links in German:

http://www.signographie.de/cms/signa_9.htm (published by Andreas Stötzner, I recommend reviewing all the PDFs published there.)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versal-Eszett

Some German type designers posted some of their design proposals for an uppercase ß at:
http://www.typeforum.de/modules.php?op=modload&name=XForum&file=viewthre...

I find many of these design proposals structurally flawed -- they don’t look like uppercase letters. They look like lowercase letters enlarged to match uppercase. The graphical structure of the Roman uppercase is very different from lowercase. If one were to invent a new uppercase letter, it would have to stylistically match the Roman uppercase. If Unicode really decides to encode uppercase ß, type designers should imagine what the uppercase ß would have looked from the very beginning, rather than trying to work out of the existing lowercase ß form.

Note that the history of "ß" is somewhat surprising. The letter developed in a two-wise way: as a ligation of long s and round ("normal") s, and as a ligation of long s and z. The German language adopted unified spelling rules only in 1901. Before that, both in the middle ages and in the humanist period, German spelling differed much. For example, "Thor" and "Tor" were equal variants of spelling the word meaning "gate".

Sharp s was denoted by different writers differently (as ſs or ſz, which looked like ſʒ). The graphical shape of the ß ligature developed independently in these two ways.

This dichotomy still shows itself in a small minority practice of uppercasing ß as "SZ" rather than "SS". Incidentally, this practice is understandable for most German readers (though not actively practiced), i.e. "GROSZSTADT" or "MASZGEBLICH" is understandable as the uppercasing of Großstadt or maßgeblich.

See http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamt/490566363/ for an example.

One interesting issue is that in the 1996 spelling reform the status of ß as a single letter has been finally confirmed. In the previous spelling, the general rule was that short vowels are denoted by following them by doubled consonant letters while long vowels are followed by single consonant letters. So writing "met" always indicates a long "e:" while "mett" indicates a short "e".

In case of "s"/"ß", it was confusing. Following a vowel with a single "s" always denoted a long vowel, following a vowel with a doubled "ss" indicated a short vowel, but following a vowel with "ß" did not give clue whether the vowel was short or long. So "Ruß" was actually pronounced "ru:s" as if the "ß" stood for a single consonant letter, but "Nuß" was pronounced "nus" as if the "ß" stood for a doubled consonant letter.

The 1996 spelling removed this uncertainty by changing the spelling of all "ß" into "ss" when the preceding vowel was to be pronounced short. Today’s spelling of "Nuss" or "dass" underlines that the vowels are to be pronounced short.

The uppercasing of "ß" as "SS" but also as "SZ" defeats this clear rule. If I uppercase the word "Rußpartikel" into "RUSSPARTIKEL" or even "RUSZPARTIKEL", suddenly the natural way of pronouncing the "U" changes from short to long, so the reader is confused. The confusion is even bigger now, after the reform, because the special "undefined" treatment of "ß" no longer exists, so readers are used to "ß" being always treated as a single consonant letter, not as a ligature of a doubled consonant.

To remain logical, consistent and reader-friendly, "ß" needs (at some point) to assume a single graphemic shape in the uppercase.

I strongly feel that uppercasing "ß" as "SS" is now -- especially under the new rules -- a temporary anachronism. "ß" is a single CHARACTER (as per orthographic perception). It has functionally liberated itself from its historical background (which was a ligature of ſs or ſz).

Today, "ß" is no more a ligature of "ſs" than "ä" is a ligature of "ae". The transition process from "ae" to "ä" has been completed about 200 years ago, and the transition process between "ſs" to "ß" is happening now. Encoding the uppercase "ä" as "A ZWJ E" (or something like that) would make as little sense as encoding the uppercase "ß" as "S ZWJ S".

I believe that "SS" is an anachronic, still-in-use but slowly-to-vanish poor man’s solution to write the uppercase "ß". I believe that it should be an exciting task for type designers now to come up with a new form. In my opinion, this issue is definitely not one that is completely solved. We’re in the middle of a slow transition period for "ß". The 1996 reform started it and showed the direction.

I myself once had the idea that Scedilla (U+015E, Ş) would be most appropriate for denoting uppercase ß.

After all, Ş is historically an S with a subscribed z (that at this time looked like ʒ). Since ß is a ligature of either ſs or of ſʒ, uppercasing it as Sʒ, or, effectively, Ş, would historically make sense.

Using this notation, "Gauß" or "Roßberg" would be uppercased to "GAUŞ" or "ROŞBERG".

Similarly, the umlaut in "ä" or "ö" is historically a superscripted "e", so historically "ä" and "æ" are two different ligations of "ae", and "ö" and "œ" are two different ligations of "oe".

Since German readers are currently used to uppercasing ß as SS, i.e. they write "GAUSS" or "ROSSBERG", I even thought of a compromise: the SS remains doubled but for added distinctiveness, a subscribed z (i.e. a cedilla) is added after the first S. In other words, "Gauß" or "Roßberg" should be uppercased as "GAUŞS" or "ROŞSBERG".

Historically, this would make sense. The cedilla would here have a similar function to the trema in Spanish or French: "GAUŞS" would make clear that it comes from "Gauß" while "GAUSS" would make clear that it comes from "Gauss".

"ROŞSBERG" does not look very awkward to a German reader. The addition of a diacritic does not dramatically change the reading pattern but still adds a distinctive mark that is, indeed, needed. If I were to design a glyph that should go into U+1E9E, it would probably look like ŞS, or perhaps just SS, depending on the style of the typeface.

An alternative approach is to look at the existing uppercase-to-lowercase relations within the Latin alphabet and try to derive a shape for the uppercase ß which maintains the same relations.

In most of the middle ages and the period up until the 19th century, the long s ("ſ") and "f" were closely related, "f" being simply a "ſ" with a stroke going through. The same, very primitive graphic relation exists between the prototypic shapes of the Greek letters gamma (Γ) and digamma (Ϝ). Since the minuscule "f" always has been a "ſ" with a middle stroke, then the capital "F" might also be considered an uppercase "ſ" with a stroke going through. Of course an uppercase long s never existed, but this relation may be helpful when constructing the uppercase ß.

Because I think that *if* the Latin alphabet ever used or needed another capital S, the preferred shape could be that of a gamma (Γ). This is a simple, effective shape that maintains a stylistic relation to the lowercase long s that is typical of other uppercase-to-lowercase relations.

If we look at the relations between Aa Ee Ff Mm Pp, we will notice that sharp, edgy connections in the uppercase are related to more smooth, round connections in the lowercase. If "F" developed into "f" in a cursive hand, then it is very easy to imagine that a cursive rendition of the "Γ" shape might, indeed, look very much like "ſ".

This is an important observation when thinking about the shape of an uppercase "ß": I assert that the shape of uppercase "ß" must be "edgier" than the lowercase. In short, I think that the left part of uppercase ß should be "Γ".

What about the right part? Here, I would call to exploit the double origin of "ß", which developed paralelly as a ligature of "ſs" as well as of "ſz" (where the "z" historically used the "ʒ" shape, so "ſʒ").

These days, the lowercase "ß" is typically derived from the ligated form of "ſs". For visual dissimilation purposes -- to strongly set apart the lowercase and the (new) uppercase "ß" I would derive the uppercase "ß" from a ligation of the hypothetical uppercase "ſ" (i.e. "Γ") and the shape of "the other" origin of "ß", i.e. of the historical "Z" shape.

In short, I believe that the best graphical rendition of an uppercase "ß" would be be a well-designed ligature that incorporates these shapes: "ΓƷ"

I have made a small simulation using Garamond Premier (please excuse my poor drawing abilities):

http://www.twardoch.com/tmp/germandbls_garamond.png

The first line shows what the historical origin of ß looks like, i.e. long s followed by a round s. The second line shows the current shape of ß as we know it. The third line shows what a hypothetical uppercase long S might look like ("Γ"), which is just a mental exercise. The fourth line is my proposal for the uppercase ß shape.

Andreas Stötzner has proposed an elaborate document that tries to explore all possible combinations of drawing an uppercase ß:

http://www.signographie.de/cms/upload/pdf/Signa9_Kombinatorik_SZ_3.0.pdf

My proposal corresponds to the scheme A1-B2-C1, which I has the most "uppercase" appearance of all those presented there.

On a related matter, at the exhibition "Neue Baukunst. Berlin um 1800", which is on display at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin until May 28, I have discovered a fantastic calligraphic lowercase "ß" shape, in which the "long s" part connects to the BOTTOM and not to the top of the following "short s". Please take a look:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamt/490547406/

This got my imagination going.

Regards,
Adam

[Mark Simonson]

I remember reading something online about this a while back and thinking it was as pointless as proposing uppercase forms of fi, fl, and ff. But maybe not. I don't read, write, or speak German, but I like your solution best of all the ones I've seen so far.

[twardoch]

Mark,

it is not like uppercase forms for fi or fl. The lack of "uppercase ß" means that it is uppercased to "SS", but "ss" is also uppercased to "SS". So "SS" is an ambiguous representation of two different lowercase combinations. This is particularly important in personal names: "Peter Weiß" and "Peter Weiss" are two distinct names and one may not be substituted by the other. But in uppercase, it's only "PETER WEISS" which is ambiguous because it does not exactly tell you what name it actually stands for.

It is a bit like the French practice of removing accents over vowels when uppercasing. This practice was introduced when typewriters came into use simply because typewriters did not have separate uppercase accented letters. These days, it's a bad ambiguous anachronic practice which is no longer necessary but still practiced by many French people who are used to the typewriter customs and actually think you HAVE TO remove the accents when uppercasing.

This also reminds me of another practice, i.e. replacing long dashes by single or (perhaps) double hyphens.

As I have explained, the method of uppercasing "ß" as "SS" is in my eyes an anachronism. It is still the majority practice according to official German spelling rules, but I think this is largely a technological limitation. If well-designed uppercase ß exists in fonts, and there is a Unicode codepoint for it, *and* (at some point) it is mapped to the German keyboard layout in Windows and Mac OS X, some people will *happily* start using it.

"Popular use" of "ß" in the middle of all-uppercase text suggests that there is an authentic need for that character. I believe we're still years ahead of widespread adoption, but I think type designers should do their best now to come up with appropriate forms, or at least once the character has been officially encoded.

Besides, isn't it fun to invent a new letter?

Adam

[cuttlefish]

Oh boy, another letter to add to Agamemnon, but I like it! You'll see it in my next revision.

[twardoch]

BTW, in a font, the appropriate glyphname for the uppercase ß would be germandbls.case or germandbls.cap but not Germandbls! Should the character be encoded in Unicode under the proposed codepoint, a better glyphname would be uni1E9E, but I wouldn’t start using that glyphname yet.

In an OpenType font, you might want to encode the glyph as a "stylistic case variant". To do that, do the following:

1. Create an indentical duplicate of the lowercase germandbls glyph named germandbls.ss01.
2. Design your uppercase ß and name it germandbls.case.
3. In the OpenType Layout feature definition code for the salt and ss01 features, include the substitution sub germandbls by germandbls.ss01.
4. In the OpenType Layout feature definition code for the case feature, include the substitution sub germandbls.ss01 by germandbls.case.

If your font contains smallcaps, then in addition:

1. Provide a glyph named germandbls.smcp which looks like two smallcap-S letters (the "traditional" way of making a smallcap ß).
2. Design your "new" ("true") smallcap-S and name it germandbls.smcp_ss01.
3. In the OpenType Layout feature definition code for the smcp feature, include the substitution sub germandbls by germandbls.smcp.
4. In the OpenType Layout feature definition code for the salt and ss01 features, include the substitution sub germandbls.smcp by germandbls.smcp_ss01.
5. Make sure that the feature definitions for salt and ss01 are ordered below the definition of smcp.
6. If uppercase ß gets encoded in Unicode and your font has a glyph with it named uni1E9E, then in the OpenType Layout feature definition code for the c2sc feature, include the substitution sub uni1E9E by germandbls.smcp_ss01. It that case, you may also consider using the name uni1E9E.smcp instead of germandbls.smcp_ss01.

It just occured to me that another approach to the uppercase ß might also be feasible (again, sorry for the imperfect color of the strokes):

This alternative treatment is analogical to the alternative treatment of the "J", which may reside on the baseline or descend below it.

Adam

[Mark Simonson]

Does SS ever begin a word? I would guess not, in which case there wouldn't seem to be a need for it in a formal script. (Except perhaps to accommodate people who insist on setting formal scripts in all caps...?)

[twardoch]

No words or names ever start with a "ß" so you're right, the character would not be necessary in a formal script.

A.

[Mark Simonson]

Rats.

[dan_reynolds]

This isn't the euro currency symbol. I wouldn't expect to see most font producers integrating an uppercase ß into their products anytime soon.

[poms]

You can see a lot of stuff in Germany, where people put in a lowercase-ß when using All Caps, like ROßMANN and such. There is surely a need for it, especially for names. It's different, if you called ie Heike Rossmann or Heike Roßmann. Written in All Caps, it is impossible to know, if it's Rossmann or Roßmann.
But the Versal-ß has no common known form yet. If there would be a typeface with Versal-ß included, would i, as a designer, use this Versal-ß or the common "SS"? I think, i would use the "SS" to play save. Ok, it really depends on how obvious is the connection between the Versal-ß and the common lowercase ß.

[Andreas Stötzner]

» the history of “ß” is somewhat surprising. The letter developed in a two-wise way: as a ligation of long s and round (“normal”) s, and as a ligation of long s and z.« (A.Tw.)

NO! No, no, no.
We need to distinguish the ORIGIN OF THE CHARACTER from the LETTERSHAPES.
This has been mixed up by everybody for far too long.

The origin of the ß *as a character* is: a long s with *some* curl or swash or stroke attached, in order to mark it being not an 'ordinary [long] s'. That attachment became randomly written like the ezh- (or 3-) shape by time (the same we find with other Latin letters for abbr., e.g. q).
Therefor the letter became named “eszett”, the common mind thus just describing what he sees, regardless of the fact that the letter (the character) was NOT derived from long-s and z functionally or phonetically or in the sense of a typographic ligature. Note that up today “Eszett” is also named “Dreierles-Es” or “Scharfes Es” which indicates the very idea of ß as a character of its own.
The earliest sample of a “ß” in an upright roman-style printed German text (1667) is definitely no long-s_s nor a longs_z (ezh-shape). It’s something else.

The “ß is a s_s-ligature” theory was induced by the italic long-s_s ligature later becoming (ab-)used to represent the German ß. Today the glyphs we use in Roman and Italic for ß are actually two different letters (or glyphs) by origin.

A tricky history, admittedly.

But thanks Adam, for your elaborate explanations. Sorting out what the capital ß might look like this should be the level to work on it.

By the way, you’ll find it notable that we (searching for Signa 9) actually testified two medieval examples for the capital long S, one of them Gamma-shaped.

[Jan]

It says here that it’s official. The uppercase “ß” is coming:
http://www.fontblog.de/das-versale-ss-rueckt-naeher-bauanleitung

There’s also a guide how to build an uppercase “ß”:
http://fontshop.de/pdf/versales_eszett.pdf

All in german, of course ;-)

[J Weltin]

Thank you Adam for this very elaborate and profound thesis of ways to find a design for a new UC Germandbls. This is the best thread i have read on this topic so far. There are very hot discussions in Germany about wether or not it makes sense to include this character.

As nice as it would be to *invent* a new character (i am convinced of your examples of the Gamma-S ligature), i find the S-cedilla followed by S solution very plausible.

My concern is: if the knowledge of the inclusion of an UC Germandbls into Unicode is spread everywhere i fear that some commission will determine what that character has to look like. The S-cedilla proposal is very easy and fast to determine as standard (and it would follow the convention to capitalize *ß* by *SS*). Also there would be no need to update fonts. This could be taken up into the orthography (and the Duden) immediately.

That’s my pragmatic view. A new character might come up in a disaster as it happened with the Euro (if some commission sets up the design guides) or it will take a very long time until there is a form for the new character that will be widely accepted. I absolutely agree that a new character has to follow the forms and origins of the Roman alphabet (which are the preceding Greek letters).
It also could all end up in a design competition (hope not!)

Thank you Andreas for an update of this character’s tricky history.

[Andreas Stötzner]

If this world would be populated by typographers only, S-cedilla would certainly do.

Sorry gents, but this consideration was under discussion already 1903 and again 1956.
Forget about it. The common German reader-writer Herr WEIßMANN will *never accept a S-cedilla in his name.
And as to the Euro-sign: yes, the commission did a dreadful job, like commission tend to do. But today, since the character is “free”, we have fonts with lots of fairly well-designed Euro’s.

[J Weltin]

Well, i doubt that Herr WEIßMANN even cares if he wears a ß in his all caps setting. Only typographers do.

If you want to do something for the general public, forget it. How many people in Germany think the ß doesn’t exist anymore anyway? They thought it was banned with the last spelling reform.

I think the UC-ß should be designed with the above mentioned roots in mind and not what Herr WEIßMANN likes. He was never used to see anything else than the ß in his name. But there are more important spelling situations where this character changes meaning (Maße and Masse, e.g.). So please forget the WEIßMANNS and the like. It doesn’t change the meaning of their name nor does it change its intonation.
My two cents.

[twardoch]

Jürgen,

> It doesn’t change the meaning of their name nor does
> it change its intonation.

Of course it does. Herr ROSSBERG (i.e. Rossberg) is pronounced "rosberg" and Herr SCHUSS (i.e. Schuss) is pronounced "ʃus", while Herr ROßBERG (i.e. Roßberg) is pronounced "ro:sberg" and Herr SCHUß (i.e. Schuß) is pronounced "ʃu:s".

Adam

[J Weltin]

Got me. Accepted. Yet, i don’t think that names are the foremost concern.
In your examples it’s only about intonation but not meaning. Roß or Ross is generally short and it means horse. A ro:s doesn‘t exist, as far as i know. Could be short for Rose which is a rose, hence it would be ROSBERG.

I was only saying that in names it occurs to me that there is a favour towards a UC-ß only for aesthetic reasons. To denote different pronounciation a S-cedilla would do perfectly well. I am not against a new letter, i only try to be pragmatic and the cedilla does make sense in the historical and formal context.

[hrant]

Adam, superb contribution to typographic discourse.

Personally I'm very happy to hear about this Unicode proposal,
and even if most people never take advantage of it a slot for the
UC eszet would be a great thing to have.

In fact in general I feel we need more characters, not fewer.

hhp

[Uli]

I start with the caution that I was not involved in the implementation of the German spelling reform and that I am not an expert in this matter. However, having been a tutor at the German spelling reform publishing house DUDEN for nearly a quarter of a century, I occassionally had discussions with the editors of the spelling reform rule books.

I am under the impression that both Mr. Twardoch and Mr. Stötzner missed the crucial point concerning the s rules. The "long/short"-vowel rule as stated by Mr. Twardoch does not reflect the full rule, because the full rule distinguishes between surd (voiceless) and sonant (voiced) s sounds, i.e. the spelling depends on whether the s sound is surd or sonant.

The IPA chart was quoted by me in another context on my website

http://www.sanskritweb.net/deutsch/ipa_sans.pdf

On page 2 of this PDF, in the top chart "consonants", row "fricatives", the surd s sounds are to the left and the sonant s sounds are to the right.

In the "alveolar" column, the surd s is "s" as IPA symbol, and the sonant s is "z" as IPA symbol.

While some languages, e.g. Sanskrit, do not have sonant (voiced) s sounds, German (and also English) have both voiceless and voiced s sounds. Therefore, in such words as e.g. "Ruß" and "Nuß", we must examine two things:

Firstly, is the preceding vowel sound short or long?
Secondly, is the following s sound sonant or surd?

Mr. Twardoch considered the first question and omitted the second question. However the full rule states (I translate "DUDEN", 24th edition 2006, page 94):

"For the voiceless s sound after long vowel or diphthong, the spelling is "ß", provided that the s sound in all inflectional forms remains voiceless and no other consonant follows."

Since proper names (see e.g. English "Smith, Smyth") often disregard spelling rules, the matter is highly tricky, and I doubt whether the Unicode committee ever examined what sound (voiceless, voiced) is to be defined by the proposed "uppercase ß", considering that neither Mr. Twardoch nor Mr. Stötzner mention the tricky phonetical implications stated above.

[andreas]

This is how we do it. The graphic can be downloaded as eps too.
http://www.germantype.com/cms/upload/data/GTF_versales_sz.zip

--www.germantype.com--

[Nick Job]

Adam, I echo Hrant's comment on quality of discussion. I found your writing lucid and really interesting. Thanks for the time you have taken on this.

These days, the lowercase “ß” is typically derived from the ligated form of “ſs”. For visual dissimilation purposes — to strongly set apart the lowercase and the (new) uppercase “ß” I would derive the uppercase “ß” from a ligation of the hypothetical uppercase “ſ” (i.e. “Γ”) and the shape of “the other” origin of “ß”, i.e. of the historical “Z” shape.

In short, I believe that the best graphical rendition of an uppercase “ß” would be be a well-designed ligature that incorporates these shapes: “ΓƷ”

Yes but if I want my C and c to look similar, and my S and s, and my O and o, etc why would I want my U/c ß to be different in design derivation from its lower case counterpart? i.e. if you're going to use s for derivation of ß then shouldn't you be using S for derivation of u/c ß? Is visual dissimilation (between upper and lower cases at least) necessary in a font? (It probably depends what the font's going to be used for which is a whole different discussion.)

Andreas: your pdf is excellent. It appeals to me that there are people that are willing to do lots of very hard work and then generously share the results with all for free.

My personal view is that the Γ approach makes it look like an uppercase character (whatever that looks like - it's very subjective) more so than the long s/inverted U approach. That is not to say that I'll use the Γ approach if it doesn't suit the rest of the font. The u/c ß is certainly not going to be a fundamental character which shapes the rest of the font.

But nobody's seriously going to tell me which actual design to use in my own font? Are they?

You've surely got to do what suits the font best and, as with all fonts, there are going to be some u/c ß's which are totally different from others because there are fonts which themselves are totally different. This reflects the diversity of man and the wisdom of his Creator.

I don't pretend to know anything about the history of type, derivation of characters especially German ones, German pronunciation and the like. Nevertheless, a bigger principle is at stake:

Individual 'interpretation' of character forms is surely one of the things that makes a font great. That's probably why some of us were so hacked off by being told what the euro symbol should look like - in every font! The thought that a designer must, in any measure, comply is abhorrent to me.

Provided my font can be 'read' (whatever that word means - one person reads very differently from the next), then it can look like anything I please, can't it?

I guess the real art is designing a font that can be read well by as many different types of reader. And unfortunately, when it comes to the real art is designing a font, I'm well out of my depth.

[Nick Job]

You know, if I had a German castle, I'd print all ten pages of Andreas' pdf and hang them side by side in one of the long rooms.

[hrant]

> if I want my C and c to look similar, and my S and s, and my O and o, etc

Well, you shouldn't. :-)
I mean for text.

> if you’re going to use s for derivation of ß then
> shouldn’t you be using S for derivation of u/c ß?

Derivation should be a means, not an end.

> nobody’s seriously going to tell me which actual
> design to use in my own font? Are they?

Some people will. Ignore them.

> one person reads very differently from the next

Actually, during immersion, "normal" adults all read about the same way.

hhp

[twardoch]

> Yes but if I want my C and c to look similar,
> and my S and s, and my O and o, etc
> why would I want my U/c ß to be different
> in design derivation from its lower case counterpart?

The handwriting practice for ß by contemporary writers allows both "IS" and "I3" structures. The S shape is more flowy, cursive, written in nature than the 3 shape, which is more constructed, drawn. The uppercase-vs-lowercase contrast is exactly about that: drawn vs. written. Pretty much all of Latin uppercase has very simple, basic forms stitched together, which are easy to construct and draw. "S" is the by far most complex form within the basic scheme.

Combining a complex "long s" skeleton with an equally complex "S" skeleton is an overkill for a letter. It starts looking like a horribly complex character such as "&", which practically no-one can write properly.

I assert that letters must be simple. Uppercase letters must be simpler in skeleton than lowercase, because that is their very nature. Also, uppercase forms should be solid, strong, monumental in character.

I believe that the "monumental skeleton" of uppercase ß I propose:

https://typography.guru/xmodules/typophile/files/germandbls_garamond2_5760.png

fulfils the criteria better than the "Dresdner skeleton" that Andreas Seidel and Andreas Stötzner prefer:

https://typography.guru/xmodules/typophile/files/sz_birth_6221.gif

The Dresdner form lacks something sturdy, defined, at their top-left. It simply looks like it is half-way between uppercase and lowercase.

> Is visual dissimilation (between upper and
> lower cases at least) necessary in a font?

Of course, within a reasonable range.

A.

Ps. Edit: I meant "Dresdner form", not "Leipziger form", i.e. I meant the form that Andreas Stötzner included in his DIN/ISO/Unicode proposal (first link in my first posting).

[twardoch]

Uli,

Unicode does not need to deal with phonetics. The uppercase ß character is for people who wish to unmistakengly represent the lowercase ß in an uppercase context. There are defined rules for the use of lowercase ß, and there is no need to explain them in the Unicode standard or anywhere near that context.

The phonetic rules I described in my original posting are, of course, simplified. I did not deal with "s" that is pronounced like the English "z" (sonor). In fact, I did not mention single "s" at all, because in German, the rules of its use are actually fairly complex. What I wrote about is the difference between "ß" and "ss", which both stand for a voiceless "s" sound.

A.