[i18n] Do not take into account accents while typing

[RastaPopoulos]

With other languages than English, there is accents.

Example in French, "text editor" is "éditeur de texte".
But to DO faster, it's better to enter "editeu..." as well as "éditeu...".

Another example with another item :
If I have a contact whose name is "Régis DOE", I *must* enter "rég..." (with the accent) to get him in the list.
I should also be able to type "reg...", no ?

Being forced to use accents is like having to be careful about upper-case :(

[Jeff Fortin Tam (kiddo)]

I think the latest gnome-do does take accents into account, but only those that are typed directly (ex: "É" on the french canadian keyboard). However, "dead keys" are not supported, so if I type "^" and then "a" (which forms the character "â", it doesn't work.

[RastaPopoulos (flbl)]

No, it's the inverse. In this bug report, I say Gnome-Do MUSTN'T take into account accents because it's like take into account text-case, it's very unusable, it's not ergonomic.

When an element is called "Some Stuff to DO Some THINGS" : you can type "do some", "Do soME", "DO somE", etc, it is the same result.
So the use of the letter "e" should return results with "é", "è", ê", ë", "e", etc.

And I think it's not a "wishlist" report, but a lack of usability.

[Rafael Lorenzo (rlorenzo)]

I don't agree.

1 - If you type e letter, it doesn't match with é entries.

2 - In Spanish, for example 2 word with totally different meanings have the same spelling but a accent. We are used to type accents and we don't have any ergonomic problem.

3 - What about kanjis? I have folders and firefox links named with japonese caracters and they won't be found ever! How can I type those? In the terminal I can type any unicode character with Ctrl+May+u+code

I think this is an important limitation instead of a lack of usability.

[Alex Launi (alexlauni)]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 2:40 AM, Rafael Lorenzo <email address hidden> wrote:

> 3 - What about kanjis? I have folders and firefox links named with
> japonese caracters and they won't be found ever! How can I type those?
> In the terminal I can type any unicode character with Ctrl+May+u+code
>

We support SCIM input, you should be able to enter Japanese characters.

--
--Alex Launi

[Nicolas Chachereau (nicolas-chachereau)]

This is controversial. I'm a French speaking user, and actually like it the way Do works right now.

For example, I have one folder in my home called "études" (studies) and another one called "entrant" (incoming... it's my "inbox" for my downloads from the browser). With the current behaviour, when I type "é" I only have entries like "études" (the most used one), Économiseur d'écran (screensaver), a folder called "économie", and so on. When I type "e", I have entries like "entrant" or "Enregistreur de son".

Typing accents isn't a concern, they're directly available on the keyboard – no need for dead keys on a French (or Swiss French, in my case) keyboard.

Now it's true that for some items you might not know or remember whether they're typed with or without an accent. So a possible solution for me would be: not making a difference between e, é, è, ê in the search, but making one when remembering the prefered actions... I have no clue, whether that's possible. I think it's probably a lot of work for not much. Plus you would have to research which languages and letters are concerned (I know that in German people would be annoyed if "u" and "ü" were recognised as the same letter, since they are different, especially in the sound).

I don't think this should be "fixed".