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Re:EBCDIC Is Incompatible with GDPR by dathinab on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @08:42AM (#38012161)
in German there is an official convention for the non us-ascii letters, AFIK it predates computers and is rooted in germanic dialects developing differently and later stuff like non-german specific type writers, printing press machines, etc.

ä => ae

ö => oe

ü => ue

ß => ss

but one gotcha is that it's a fuzzy one way trip, some words, especially city names, can have a ae,oe,ue in their correct native spelling. Worse ss is a normal language building block in German which is pronounced differently then ß so writing it as ss is quite confusing for anyone which doesn't happen to know that it's correct spelling is with ß. To top that of some cases of ß spelling have officially changed to ss spelling over time due to people anyway pronouncing it more like a ss and getting it wrong all the time. And to some degree ß is semi-official abandoned by now.

Re:EBCDIC Is Incompatible with GDPR by Attrecomet on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @09:31AM (#38012578)
The letters ß and ss are pronounced exactly the same, a hard 's' sound. Their effect on the preceding sounds is slightly different, though -- 'ss' makes the vowel short, 'ß' keeps it long. In all, a rather minute difference.
Re:EBCDIC Is Incompatible with GDPR by mxmlnkn on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @11:16AM (#38013699)
After learning that ß is the ligature of literally "sz", I am astounded that "ss" is used instead to replace ß.