At 5:22 pm +0000 8/11/02, Michael Everson wrote:
I like to think of the long s as similar to the final sigma. Nobody thinks that final sigma should be a presentation form of sigma.Fashions change. It's worth noting that English typography, whether for English or Latin, gives a double long s in the middle of a word and never long s + short s or any ligature. But hand-writing of the same period (not only in England) gives the "real" long s (like U+222B) followed by final s. I have a folio version of (1778) Vergil with copious notes in longhand by the original owner as an example of this. Cervantes uses the long s but Racine only the short s. Petrarch and later Italian writers use a special form of what I would call the 'tall' s rather than the 'long' s and this can also be doubled. Montaigne has
Nobody really uses long s in modern Roman typography, and it's a lot more convenient to have this as a separate character for the nonce-uses that it has than to expect font designers round the world to add special shaping tables to all their fonts just for this critter.
as/urer , /ouvenir, retentis/ment, estoient, j'eusse, nouri/ser, au/si, aussi, po/se/sion ... etc., and imposes no rule on himself except never to write a short s at the beginning of a word or before a t.
JD
