In my understanding, many European cultures have compensated for the lack of certain characters on keyboards (especially old typewriters) by “anglicizing” some characters. For example, the German ß becomes ss, the Danish (and others) Å becomes aa.
Is there a list, official or not, of these “compensations”?
(And yes, I do realize that this could very well fit in any other language SE than English, but English would be the common trait to these).
As far as I know, the ß has not been removed in German during the 1996 reform. Its usage has simply been harmonized: ß now consistently appears after long vowels and diphthongs. If I'm correct, we still write "Straße" for street.
The ß originates from the ligature of 'ss'. So, it would not be a big mistake to replace it by 'ss', exactly like writing 'oe' instead of 'œ' (like 'cœur' in French) is acceptable to me.
In most situations, dropping accents is understandable in French. It has been common practice to drop accents on capital letters on type-writers.
However, it is considered a mistake, and modern-age computers allow all types of characters, hence there is no more excuse.
And removing accents can drastically change the meaning in French:
Use Unicode and a modern operating system with an appropriate input method editor, instead of looking for alternatives.
