Viewer - Search function - Accented characters

[pstrg]

In languages that use characters with diacritical marks (like accents), names do have variable spelling.
For example, a name like "Katia" exists also as "Kátia".
The usual behaviour for the search function is such that if one searches for the non-accented spelling (Katia) variants (like Kátia) are also presented as results.
It seems that Calibre Viewer doesn't follow the standard way:
if one searchs for Katia, only the exact occurrences (plain first a) will be shown - to find occurrences of Kátia one must search exactly for Kátia (with the acute accent on first a).

Is it really like that or am I missing some setting?

[kovidgoyal]

Yes, it's really like that.

[pstrg]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Yes, it's really like that.

Thank you for the quick answer, Mr. Goyal.

[nqk]

Dear Mr. Goyal,

If the display language is set to English, in the Content Server (not the CS viewer), the search for "vang" would return all books with metadata containing all possible accents of [a] in "v[a]ng". I like that.

But if the display language is set to Vietnamese, it only returns the exact accented characters.

Is it by design or something that could be tweaked?

[kovidgoyal]

It's by design. In English, it is often the case that accents are irrelevant when searching. In other languages, accents can change the meaning of the word so should not be ignored. I dont know Vietnamese, but for example, in Spanish, n and ñ when use din an otherwise identical word can change its meaning. Therefore, accents are ignored only in English not other languages. There is a preference to turn this on or off under Preferences->Searching.

And before anyone gets confused, this applies only to searching book metadata in the main calibre interface/content server. Not to searching inside books via the calibre viewer.

[nqk]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

It's by design. In English, it is often the case that accents are irrelevant when searching. In other languages, accents can change the meaning of the word so should not be ignored. I dont know Vietnamese, but for example, in Spanish, n and ñ when use din an otherwise identical word can change its meaning. Therefore, accents are ignored only in English not other languages. There is a preference to turn this on or off under Preferences->Searching.

And before anyone gets confused, this applies only to searching book metadata in the main calibre interface/content server. Not to searching inside books via the calibre viewer.

Of course different accents have different meanings, but it's ok to search for non-accented characters (90% of my books are with VN metadata) because I encounter many cases where it is impossible to type in the VN characters (because of the lack of the needed keyboard/software).

I can see the option you referred to, but as you pointed out, it applies only to Engish interface while I want to force it 'on" for for Vietnamese interface.

[kovidgoyal]

There is no way to force it on for other interface langauges. If you are unable to type anything but english, perhaps you should set your interface langauge to english as well.