Hi jonathan,

>do these cover '"s' [german double-s for those whose mail clients 'filter'
>severely]. the toolbox routine ignores it, rightly, as it is a ligature
>[like 'ae' [ae] and 'oe' [oe], and not a diacritic... btw do those pass also?

Sorry I let this go by so many times: what you have been calling

 german double-s

resembling in shape the greek beta is usually not not
viewed as a ligature; it is **one letter** whose name is:
 
   der stimmlose  s  (unvoiced s)

or

   der scharfe  s   (sharp s)

It was assimilated to ss only in the period when American
typewriters or ASCII keyboards squeezed it out.

Are you confusing <german sharp s> with the genuine 
ligature tz (used mostly in gothic style German print)?

The above is a current truth accepted in the the German
TeX user group "Dante". 

The "truth" is subject to frequent revision on such
matters.  (But neither you nor I have licence to revise:)

Cheers

Laurent S