Marc Wilhelm Küster <kuester at saphor dot net> wrote: > As to the long s, it is not used for writing present-day German except > in rare cases, notably in some scholarly editions and in the Fraktur > script. Very few texts beyond the names of newspapers are nowadays > produced in Fraktur. To put the long s on the German keyboard would be > quite contrary to user requirements -- and if a requirement existed, > it would be DIN's job to amend DIN 2137-2 and the upcoming DIN 2137-12 > to cater for it.
"Irrelevant," sure, but "contrary"? I don't see what harm could come from adding a character to a previously unassigned key, especially in the relatively obscure AltGr zone (Level 3). Most users could safely ignore it, and most would never even know it was there. But yes, of course it would be DIN's job to standardize such a thing (or not). Patrick Andries asked if a revised German keyboard standard would be ignored in the market with the same cavalier attitude seen in Canada (and the U.S.). My impression is that European manufacturers are held more closely to conformance with national and international standards than North American manufacturers, but I'd want some Europeans to back me up on this. -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California
