On 7-10-2009 1:05, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> I assume you meant 'a character set' in stead of 'computers'?
> 
> I'm assuming the complaint is that the Dutch adopted ASCII for their 
> computers. If it bothers you, don't do that. ;-)

Nowadays with unicode we have a choice, well sort of at least. There 
were times that most displays physically only supported ASCII and many 
programming languages also only supported ASCII.
The problem for the 'IJ' is on the one hand worse than for e.g. the 
eszett because everybody knows it is an 'i' and a 'j' together, and we 
have always used that on typewriters. Now it is easy to add ligatures to 
a font set the 'IJ' ligature is still not often used. Partly because 
many look ugly and don't seem to fit into the font and partly because 
not many people mourn the loss of Dutch culture.
The problem of the eszett (and umlaut) is OTOH perhaps a bit worse 
because the Germans seem to have yielded to American imperialism by 
changing their spelling rules so that German can now be spelled using 
ASCII only.

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