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Postings from November 2008
* karl williamson <public@khwilliamson.com> [2008-11-23 04:50]: > Another case is ligatures (they don't view ß as a ligature, and > I don't know why) So 'fi' =~ /fi/i is true. (U+FB01) Because “fi” is always exactly equivalent with “fi” and they can be mechanically substituted for one another without affecting the correctness of the text. In contradistinction, there is a whole range of German words which are correct only when written with “ss” (“Wasser”) and also a few examples which are correct only when written with “ß” (examples escape me right now, since this case is rarer and the orthography reform has muddied the waters). In this light it should be noted that back when “ß” was in fact a ligature, it was actually equivalent to “sz” rather than “ss”. You can see this in the glyph shape if you trace its evolution over time. There’s a great article about it on the Typefoundry blog, <http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2008/01/esszett-or.html>, which includes pictorial evidence. So there you have it: “ß” (today) is not a ligature. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>Thread Previous | Thread Next