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Re: [xsl] Will every XSLT processor reduce upper-case('ß') to SS ?

2013-01-05 12:02:35

On 05/01/2013 12:41, David Carlisle wrote:
On 05/01/2013 10:08, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
Hi Folks,

Here is a common German surname:

       Strauß

I used SAXON to convert the surname to uppercase:

     upper-case('Strauß')            returns STRAUSS

Notice that ß was converted to SS.


As David says, the mapping is defined by the Unicode standard, and is not processor-dependent, except that the spec allows a processor to use a future version of Unicode, which could change the mapping.

Wolfgang knows the cultural/linguistic details better than I do, but in most contexts when the name Strauß is written in upper-case, the form used in STRAUSS. The upper-case ß recently added to Unicode is a rarity. Before it was added to Unicode, the submitters were required to provide evidence that the character was in actual use, and I recall seeing various photographs of tombstones and book spines from various periods in history in the justification.

The ß character is historically a ligature formed from a long s and a z, and since long s is encountered only in lower-case, there's good reason to argue that the upper-case form should be "SZ" in archaic uses and "SS" in modern uses.

Michael Kay
Saxonica


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