I believe that "A" is not canonically equivalent to "a", but you still can't have filenames "A" and "a" coexisting in the same Windows folder. This is a consequence of having a case-insensitive filesystem. As to whether or not the case-equivalence of "ss" and "�" should be expressed (a) only in Germany, or (b) everywhere, I confess that's not really something I'd considered. I know that Unicode does have some locale-sensitive case mappings (Turkish uppercase I to dotless lowercase I for example), I was under the impression that "ss" to "�" was not one of them.
That's neither here nor there. The correspondence of ss and � is not one of case, either. The correspondence between "A" and "a" is recorded in Unicode tables, thus there is a standard for case-folding, albeit a culturally biased one. But there's no "official" Unicode standard that I know of (and that isn't saying much) that says that ss and � have to compare as equals.
I don't think it would make a great deal of sense to enforce it only in Germany, however. If you did that, then a directory tree FTPed from England to Germany might be unsaveable at the German end, so I'd argue that the default case mappings should be the ones used everywhere.
You're right; that would be a disaster. Still, ss/� is not a case of case. Um. You know.
~mark
