User blog:Belle pullman/Accents and Umlauts, oh my!

Can we establish a policy on accents and umlauts?

On my english keyboard, the only accented letter I can easily access is é - and I'm not sure how common the knowledge of how to get it is. The only way for me to type an umlaut is to find it online and copy and paste! This is a problem when it comes to coding, and searching names.

So far, for example Dusseldorf, we've just ignored the umlaut. However this changes the pronunciation of the word and I believe in some words losing the umlaut changes its meaning? Technically the correct alternate for "Düsseldorf" is "Duesseldorf". It's one thing for a well known place name, but what about all the performers names?

What is going to be easiest for our users? How will people most easily find the information they're looking for?

One option is to simply ignore all special characters, which removes all international keyboard issues but is very inaccurate.

Or we can use simple alphabet for the page names, and re-name links with the correct accents - this means names show up in searches without accents, but allows anyone to edit, and names show up correctly on pages.

Or, we use all the accents in page names, which involves copy and pasting, but is the most accurate and respectful.

I guess it depends on what's most commonly done? If you're searching for "Grégory Gonel", would you search for "Gregory"? Do we need to re-name the Dusseldorf page?