If I write an an article about Phở Gà (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup) and later search for Pho Ga, no results come up in Obsidian.
Most internationally aware search tools include this character awareness and interchangeability. It would be nice if Obsidian did as well.
Another example. Here’s a list of variations on the letter A
Áá Àà Ảả Ãã Ạạ Ăă Ắắ Ằằ Ẳẳ Ẵẵ Ặặ Ââ Ấấ Ầầ Ẩẩ Ẫẫ Ậậ
Searching for tập should also show results for tap and vice versa.
Improved search for special characters.
Make it like something like Windows File Explorer. If you search with special characters like č and get results for files words with č as well as c. It goes the other way as well if you search c you get results for c,č,ć.
As a workaround I’m adding aliases to every note with special characters but it’s really cumbersome, especially with Vietnamese ones.
Just to give some context as to why this is an issue in the first place: If I write the German character ü on a German keyboard everything is easy. It’s one key press.
For languages like Vietnamese, though, there is no key for each letter. So to type ợ you have to
o
w (to get to ơ)j (to add the dot: ợ)So if you want to search for a note called Phở Gà you have to actually type Phowr gaf and in contrast to a search in English, where your note might already show up after you typed the first couple of characters, in Vietnamese (and other similar languages) it will not because a character like ợ will only be output once you finished typing owj.
Which means that in order to find a Vietnamese note you have to type up to three times as much as to find a similar English one.
I’m also having the same issue here in PT-BR.
There are many graphic accents in Portuguese, such as in Convênio or Plano de Saúde, which means Health Care, and when searching for things like these, I’ll always type convenio to search for the file.
Still, Obsidian explicitly requires convênio to find the match. And I still haven’t found a suitable solution without adding too many aliases around my notes.