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On the newly created French Language & Usage (private beta started today), I tried to have a tag named évolution, but the accent on the é is lost. The SE engine really should allow accents on tags.

I encourage you to read The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)

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    I wish I could +2 for the blog post link. ;O)
    – M. Tibbits
    Commented Aug 17, 2011 at 22:22
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    It might require changing the database's collation. I suspect this is far more tricky to implement than it looks.
    – Frédéric Hamidi
    Commented Aug 17, 2011 at 22:22
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    I don't see how the blog post applies. The system clearly accounts for special characters, it just doesn't choose to use them all in certain situations. é isn't showing as a box or causing the system to crash or anything.
    – user154510
    Commented Aug 17, 2011 at 22:29
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    This is more of a feature request than a bug, as the sidebar when entering tags is pretty clear that you're intentionally limited to [a-z 0-9 + # - .].
    – Tim Stone
    Commented Aug 17, 2011 at 22:59
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    Adding too many "localization" features will become really messy if done too piecemeal. The localization of the Stack Exchange really should be done as a comprehensive addition to the core functionality. See: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82176/…
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Aug 22, 2011 at 15:38
  • @Robert: apart from a vague post 5 months ago, nothing is happening (and the communities concerned, despite asking, don't seem to have been involved). So, is there progress on this front?
    – F'x
    Commented Aug 22, 2011 at 15:49
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    @FX: Like that last post, any dates or specifics I could add would be wildly speculative. We've made progress by launching four non-English sites in the last three months and accommodating their immediate needs. We have your feature-request and we hear you. It simply takes time and resources to work in this development effort with the many of other features being added to Stack Exchange. See: meta.french.stackexchange.com/questions/105/…
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Aug 22, 2011 at 16:01
  • @Robert: I know it takes time, but I know that when it's not yet started, it's gonna take even more time :) Taking time is one thing, having no idea what's the plan is something else…
    – F'x
    Commented Aug 22, 2011 at 16:03
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    @Tim Is defective-by-design a bug or a feature request?
    – F'x
    Commented Aug 25, 2011 at 8:56
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    @FX A feature-request, since there isn't a misbehaviour of the system here, just an additional use case that the system would have to be extended to account for.
    – Tim Stone
    Commented Aug 25, 2011 at 13:01
  • @RobertCartaino Over four years later, it is still impossible to have even "western" names in tags. Surely properly extending the character set for tags could have been managed in the meantime?
    – Raphael
    Commented Apr 18, 2016 at 14:06

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
-1

If you type évolution into the tag list when creating a question, will still be suggested. Likewise searching evolution will show posts with either version, and searching évolution will shows posts with either version. In sum, the accenting has no effect on the system at all.

I can see why you might not like it, but consider that tags already replace spaces with hypens and upper case letters with lower case letters. Tags aren't supposed to accurately represent proper names, accented letters, symbols, etc; they're supposed to be both useful and simple, and they are. Why complicate it?

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    Let's say the tag system replaces every vowel by an E. How would you feel about that? It's simple, but dead wrong.
    – F'x
    Commented Aug 17, 2011 at 22:19
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    The challenge is that the Stack Exchange network infrastructure is really designed for English. However, I agree that it should support these Unicode characters in tags (or at least ASCII!!).
    – M. Tibbits
    Commented Aug 17, 2011 at 22:21
  • That would impact readability greatly. The effect of removing an accent is much smaller. As I said, though, I can see why you might not like it. tolkien is "dead wrong" for the proper name Tolkien, but so? @M.Tibbits é is part of extended ASCII, so Unicode wouldn't even be needed :P
    – user154510
    Commented Aug 17, 2011 at 22:21
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    @Matthew: much smaller to whom? Tomorrow, a Chinese Language SE opens, if we follow your lead, we’ll hear “but really, using ASCII instead of CJK you don't loose much” :)
    – F'x
    Commented Aug 17, 2011 at 22:25
  • No, I don't think the Chinese site should use English tags. That's pretty clearly not what I'm saying. If readability was the only concern, the French would simply abandon accents altogether and replace é et al with unique characters that are easier to distinguish. Would you advocate that? I don't.
    – user154510
    Commented Aug 17, 2011 at 22:32

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