A search engine regards the words "stone" and "STONE" as identical. So why isn't いし treated the same as イシ? The difference can be quite marked, such as レイプ versus れいぷ or such.
Something I noticed in the Unicode 3.0 book: Case. (1) Feature of certain alphabets where the letters have two distinct forms. These variants, which may differ markedly in shape and size, are called the uppercase letter (also known as capital or majuscule) and the lowercase letter (also known as small or minuscule). (2) るるるるるる So kana have case. So are hiragana uppercase or lowercase? I think hiragana are probably lowercase. Why? 1) They are newer. Isn't uppercase usually older? 2) Which kana do you send a telegram in? If you want to see some weird furigana, try a Rurouni Kenshin album I've got. 鎮魂歌 with furigana れくいえむ らんま ★じゅういっちゃん★ ×あかね ーーーーー PTKA IZGT F SFNNGYGB ZRMSFTB WM あまんけ NFEGT FM MGYWPRMKA FM F SFNNGYGB IWOG ねけあず IWKK QGT FT IPQGT ZFXG GHRFK YWJZNM. らんま ーーーーー いいなずけ
