[erlang-questions] Scharfes S (WAS: Erlang 3000?)

[Julian Bäume]

moin,

On Wednesday 19 November 2008 17:08:02 Valentin Micic wrote:
> I was under impression that one may write a lowercase ss with the same
> meaning and that "ß" just represents a short way of writing "ss".
No, in fact you change the pronunciation of the vowel right before "ß" or 
"ss". If you write "ss", the vowel before is spoken much shorter than with "ß" 
following.

> As for pronunciation, I think that single s is indeed pronounced "sz", thus
> Suzuki in German sound quite contrary to what one would expect. I might be
> wrong, but scharfes s is used to eliminate "z" sound in "s", hence Strasse,
> I mean -- Straße.
Pronunciation of the "ss" or "ß" in words is the same. One example here is: 
"muss" and "Muß". The difference in pronunciation is just that you speak a 
short "u" in the first and a long one in the second case.

Concerning the uppercase version of "ß": There is quite no need for that. The 
discussion about the need of an uppercase "ß" is much older than computers.... 
Since April this year there is a Unicode character that represents the capital 
ß.

This article in the English wikipedia gives a short overview about this topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_ß

Some time ago I read a very interesting discussion in a German typography 
forum about how this letter should look like.
http://www.typografie.info/typoforum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=300&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
I guess, it was this one, but I'm not sure.

just my 2ct..
Julian