Andreas Stötzner

Very good designs, Mr. Shinn. And Thank You for having been one of the first pioneers who made this character a credible member of the alphabet family.
However, I disselect the Leipzig form in most cases, definitely in all those which are not Italic.
The Leipzig form is based on the bias that the right part of the letter has to resemble an s. Which is clearly untrue for the historic emergence of the letter ß in medieval manuscripts and early prints. Only from the 19th century onwards, when composing German texts in Roman typefaces instead of blackletter evolved, it proved to be handy to just utilize the cursive Italian ſ-s-ligature for the German ‘eszett’. Since then, the character had (at least) two different origins.
The ſ-s theory is but a legacy of the 20th century, of a man named Tschichold in particular. But we know for quite some years today, that he was wrong.
To cut a long story short (see also this recent article): the sharp s is not – or not neccessarily – an ſ-z or an ſ-s, it is rather a long s with something.

There may be even more to take into account. The Phaistos Disc is supposed to be some 3.500 years old. To me that is ‘printing with movable type’. I recall I have seen similar stamp prints on old ceramic vessels (but fail to remeber where it was).
The Gutenberg revolution consisted of several parts which were to put together to form a technically viable set of operations. Printing already existed in those days, paper already existed, presses already existed. To cast metal already existed. But to make punches for letters, to cast them in a proto-industrial way, to arrange them mechanically to lines of text and the lines to columns – and to combine this achievement with all the other parts of the process, that was the actual bite.

There is no rule.

> What about d_d?
You decide.
But I’d say there is not much reason for a dd ligature.

I’m not a medievalist myself but I have done much research and font work upon medieavist and linguistics-related characters. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be a worthwhile project to provide these scholar groups with well-equipped fonts in the style similar to Times or Caslon. I’m pretty sure that some potential users would welcome such a choice – for which John’s Brill is a very good option already.

I’m not sure wether this is relevant for Bible texts but anyhow, make sure you include the dong sign, for complete language support.