# mathdesign compiles ß to SS

I'd like to use the package mathdesign, but it somehow makes problems with the german letter ß. My question is related to XeTeX: “ß” compiles as “SS”, German umlauts work but different because the reason seems to be mathdesign here.
The effect is best show with the following minimal example

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setdefaultlanguage[spelling=new,babelshorthands=true]{german}%
%\usepackage{utopia}\usepackage[utopia]{mathdesign}
\begin{document}
The german ß compiles to SS when used with \emph{mathdesign} package.
\end{document}

beeing compiled with line 4 uncommented resulting in or with line 4 activated resulting in .
Ä, Ö, Ü and so on works fine.

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## 1 Answer

Unless you really have to use polyglossia, you can try the following, which seems to work fine on my machine:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[utopia]{mathdesign}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Utopia}
\begin{document}
The german ß compiles to ß when used with \emph{mathdesign} package.
$$a^2 = b^2 + c^2$$
\end{document}

This uses the OpenType version of Utopia (for text), available here, which I think is a bit more appropriate in XeTeX/LuaTeX. For math, mathdesign remains in use.

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Hi, thanks for your example. But - is polyglossia buggy? I startedt using XeLaTeX about 18 months ago and red somewhere, that like babel in LaTeX, polyglossia !SHOULD! be used in XeLaTeX. What is the truth? Thanks. –  Bastian Ebeling May 27 '13 at 19:09
@BastianEbeling here is a little bit of insight: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/88481/polyglossia-vs-babel –  clemens May 27 '13 at 19:16
I've been following Ulrike Fischer's advice to just stick with babel (in Xe/LuaLaTeX) until you run into problems ...which so far I haven't; the scripts I've used it with have been working fine (Latin, Cyrillic, polytonic Greek). –  Nils L May 27 '13 at 19:37
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