Thread

1. BUG #18216: Unaccent function is unable to remove accents (diacritic signs) from Japanese character 'ド'

   PG Bug reporting form <noreply@postgresql.org> — 2023-11-28T07:15:41Z

   The following bug has been logged on the website:
   
   Bug reference:      18216
   Logged by:          Shailesh Totale
   Email address:      shailesh.totale@sailpoint.com
   PostgreSQL version: 13.8
   Operating system:   Linux
   Description:        
   
   Hello team ,
   
   PostgreSQL's unaccent module does not use Unicode normalisation, but only a
   simple search-and-replace dictionary. The dictionary, unaccent.rules
   (https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/contrib/unaccent/unaccent.rules)
     , does not contain these Japanese  characters, thus  its unable to remove
   the diacritic signs.  Can someone please guide when we can expect these
   Japanese characters will be added.
   
   Also tried to check with latest versions of Postgresql still the latest
   version does not have support for the Japanese characters.
   
   https://pgpedia.info/u/unaccent.html
   
   Thanks,
   Shailesh
   
   

2. Re: BUG #18216: Unaccent function is unable to remove accents (diacritic signs) from Japanese character 'ド'

   Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> — 2023-11-28T14:58:35Z

   PG Bug reporting form <noreply@postgresql.org> writes:
   > PostgreSQL's unaccent module does not use Unicode normalisation, but only a
   > simple search-and-replace dictionary. The dictionary, unaccent.rules
   > (https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/contrib/unaccent/unaccent.rules)
   >   , does not contain these Japanese  characters, thus  its unable to remove
   > the diacritic signs.  Can someone please guide when we can expect these
   > Japanese characters will be added.
   
   unaccent.rules, as distributed, is just an example.  It is not meant
   to be exhaustive or authoritative.  Feel free to add your own entries
   to your copy.
   
   			regards, tom lane
   
   
   
   

3. Re: BUG #18216: Unaccent function is unable to remove accents (diacritic signs) from Japanese character 'ド'

   Michael Paquier <michael@paquier.xyz> — 2023-11-29T01:06:02Z

   On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 09:58:35AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
   > PG Bug reporting form <noreply@postgresql.org> writes:
   >> PostgreSQL's unaccent module does not use Unicode normalisation, but only a
   >> simple search-and-replace dictionary. The dictionary, unaccent.rules
   >> (https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/contrib/unaccent/unaccent.rules)
   >>   , does not contain these Japanese  characters, thus  its unable to remove
   >> the diacritic signs.  Can someone please guide when we can expect these
   >> Japanese characters will be added.
   > 
   > unaccent.rules, as distributed, is just an example.  It is not meant
   > to be exhaustive or authoritative.
   
   FWIW, I'm quite fluent in Japanese and was discussing a bit this
   around me and, like me, folks were kind of troubled with the concept
   that these should be considered as "accents", because it would
   entirely change the meaning of what each Hiragana and Katakana means.
   I am not sure if it would make sense to apply such an operation on an
   expression index or similar, either.  As a whole, adding that to the
   in-core unaccent.rules would be a bad idea if we were to consider it.
   
   > Feel free to add your own entries to your copy.
   
   Indeed.  The way to write a .rules should be clearly documented.
   --
   Michael
   

4. Re: BUG #18216: Unaccent function is unable to remove accents (diacritic signs) from Japanese character 'ド'

   Jeff Janes <jeff.janes@gmail.com> — 2023-11-29T02:40:27Z

   On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 8:06 PM Michael Paquier <michael@paquier.xyz> wrote:
   
   > On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 09:58:35AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
   > > PG Bug reporting form <noreply@postgresql.org> writes:
   > >> PostgreSQL's unaccent module does not use Unicode normalisation, but
   > only a
   > >> simple search-and-replace dictionary. The dictionary, unaccent.rules
   > >> (
   > https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/contrib/unaccent/unaccent.rules
   > )
   > >>   , does not contain these Japanese  characters, thus  its unable to
   > remove
   > >> the diacritic signs.  Can someone please guide when we can expect these
   > >> Japanese characters will be added.
   > >
   > > unaccent.rules, as distributed, is just an example.  It is not meant
   > > to be exhaustive or authoritative.
   >
   > FWIW, I'm quite fluent in Japanese and was discussing a bit this
   > around me and, like me, folks were kind of troubled with the concept
   > that these should be considered as "accents", because it would
   > entirely change the meaning of what each Hiragana and Katakana means.
   >
   
   But isn't it generally the case that removing accents might make you land
   on a different word with a different meaning?
   
   'ano' and  'año' for example mean different things in Spanish (but unaccent
   removes it anyway, at least in one out of four attempts to get the
   non-7-bit-ASCII wedged through my terminal and into the function).
   
   That doesn't mean that unaccent is required to do it, of course. But
   the possibility of changing the meaning doesn't seem like a reason not to
   do it.
   
   Cheers,
   
   Jeff
   

5. Re: BUG #18216: Unaccent function is unable to remove accents (diacritic signs) from Japanese character 'ド'

   Francisco Olarte <folarte@peoplecall.com> — 2023-11-29T08:12:45Z

   Hi Jeff:
   
   On Wed, 29 Nov 2023 at 03:40, Jeff Janes <jeff.janes@gmail.com> wrote:
   
   I am not going to generally discuss this:
   > But isn't it generally the case that removing accents might make you land on a different word with a different meaning?
   
   But this one is a bad example,
   > 'ano' and  'año' for example mean different things in Spanish (but unaccent removes it anyway, at least in one out of four attempts to get the non-7-bit-ASCII wedged through my terminal and into the function).
   
   N and Ñ are different letters in spanish. It looks like an accent, can
   be typed as such and some unaccent rules in some programs may make
   them equal, Ñ is as different from N as it is from Z ( I am spanish,
   and in case you want some authority link see
   https://www.rae.es/dpd/%C3%B1 ). It has it own pages in the dictionary
   ( even on paper, I just checked in case my memory fails ).
   
   We used to have also CH and LL as letters, but they were dropped
   "recently" ( that meaning this century, I'm getting old ).
   
   On the other "accents", à,è,ì,ò, ù  can generally be unaccented w/o
   problem, although they may change meaning in some corner cases I do
   not remember seen them do that since the special examples in school.
   Other thing is ü, which is used on our "special" handling of hard/soft
   vowels after g, i.e., you do not pronounce the u in "reguero" ( bot
   modify how you pronounce the g, differently from agente ), but in
   "agüero" you do pronounce it.
   
   But Ñ is a proper letter, you cannot break it. Our alphabet goes m-n-ñ-o-p-q.
   
   Francisco Olarte.
   
   P.S. to really sound spanish, we would have picked up "cono" for the
   examples :-p
   
   FO
   
   
   
   

6. Re: BUG #18216: Unaccent function is unable to remove accents (diacritic signs) from Japanese character 'ド'

   Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com> — 2023-11-29T08:45:09Z

   Hi
   
   st 29. 11. 2023 v 9:13 odesílatel Francisco Olarte <folarte@peoplecall.com>
   napsal:
   
   > Hi Jeff:
   >
   > On Wed, 29 Nov 2023 at 03:40, Jeff Janes <jeff.janes@gmail.com> wrote:
   >
   > I am not going to generally discuss this:
   > > But isn't it generally the case that removing accents might make you
   > land on a different word with a different meaning?
   >
   > But this one is a bad example,
   > > 'ano' and  'año' for example mean different things in Spanish (but
   > unaccent removes it anyway, at least in one out of four attempts to get the
   > non-7-bit-ASCII wedged through my terminal and into the function).
   >
   > N and Ñ are different letters in spanish. It looks like an accent, can
   > be typed as such and some unaccent rules in some programs may make
   > them equal, Ñ is as different from N as it is from Z ( I am spanish,
   > and in case you want some authority link see
   > https://www.rae.es/dpd/%C3%B1 ). It has it own pages in the dictionary
   > ( even on paper, I just checked in case my memory fails ).
   >
   > We used to have also CH and LL as letters, but they were dropped
   > "recently" ( that meaning this century, I'm getting old ).
   >
   > On the other "accents", à,è,ì,ò, ù  can generally be unaccented w/o
   > problem, although they may change meaning in some corner cases I do
   > not remember seen them do that since the special examples in school.
   > Other thing is ü, which is used on our "special" handling of hard/soft
   > vowels after g, i.e., you do not pronounce the u in "reguero" ( bot
   > modify how you pronounce the g, differently from agente ), but in
   > "agüero" you do pronounce it.
   >
   > But Ñ is a proper letter, you cannot break it. Our alphabet goes
   > m-n-ñ-o-p-q.
   >
   
   Some users use unaccent for transformation to 7bit ASCII.
   
   In the Czech language I can find more examples, where removing diacritics
   means significant loss and the meaning of the world should be based only on
   context.
   
   Žár (the heat) -> zar
   Zář (the shine) -> zar
   Být (to be) -> byt
   Byt (the flat)-> byt
   
   And for unaccent we expected this loss.
   
   So my question is, can the unaccent function be used for transformation to
   7bit ASCII or is it wrong usage?
   
   Regards
   
   Pavel
   
   
   >
   > Francisco Olarte.
   >
   > P.S. to really sound spanish, we would have picked up "cono" for the
   > examples :-p
   >
   > FO
   >
   >
   >
   

7. Re: BUG #18216: Unaccent function is unable to remove accents (diacritic signs) from Japanese character 'ド'

   Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org> — 2023-11-29T09:13:54Z

   On 28.11.23 08:15, PG Bug reporting form wrote:
   > PostgreSQL's unaccent module does not use Unicode normalisation, but only a
   > simple search-and-replace dictionary. The dictionary, unaccent.rules
   > (https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/contrib/unaccent/unaccent.rules)
   >    , does not contain these Japanese  characters, thus  its unable to remove
   > the diacritic signs.  Can someone please guide when we can expect these
   > Japanese characters will be added.
   > 
   > Also tried to check with latest versions of Postgresql still the latest
   > version does not have support for the Japanese characters.
   > 
   > https://pgpedia.info/u/unaccent.html
   
   As the subsequent discussion shows, it's not quite clear to everybody 
   what the exact mandate of the unaccent extension is.  Maybe we'll arrive 
   at some conclusion.
   
   In the meantime, I suggest you also consider solving this with 
   collations.  You might find that those have a more principled approach 
   to this problem, and they also have a lot of customization capabilities. 
     The documentation contains examples of accent-insensitive collations 
   (e.g., [0]).  Maybe that will work for you, or serve as the basis for 
   customization.
   
   [0]: 
   https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/collation.html#COLLATION-NONDETERMINISTIC
   
   
   
   

8. Re: BUG #18216: Unaccent function is unable to remove accents (diacritic signs) from Japanese character 'ド'

   Francisco Olarte <folarte@peoplecall.com> — 2023-11-29T09:15:57Z

   Hi Pavel.
   
   On Wed, 29 Nov 2023 at 09:45, Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com> wrote:
   > st 29. 11. 2023 v 9:13 odesílatel Francisco Olarte <folarte@peoplecall.com> napsal:
   ...
   >> But Ñ is a proper letter, you cannot break it. Our alphabet goes m-n-ñ-o-p-q.
   > Some users use unaccent for transformation to 7bit ASCII.
   
   Right, I've done it manually sometimes. But I did not normaly just
   supress the ~ , I turned año to anno ( IIRC nn was the predecessor of
   Ñ, and it is used in similar place like "Anno domini" ) or to agno (
   which sounds similar in French, and in things like "agnus dei qui
   tollit pecata mundi" ( although that one has a much different meanig )
   ).
   
   I was trying that normally you can supress tildes in spanish without
   much problem, like in aviòn. Most of them just marks how to pronounce
   them, they are useful if you do not know the word, but useless if you
   know it. Some of them are used to differentiate things like adverbs
   and pronoums, but in this case you can deduce it from the whole
   phrase. But not with n/ñ. ñoño and nono are completely different and
   unrelated words, and they even go in different "chapters" of the
   dictionary.
   
   > In the Czech language I can find more examples, where removing diacritics means significant loss and the meaning of the world should be based only on context.
   ...
   That seems even more complex than French, and I've never been able to
   cope with them!
   > And for unaccent we expected this loss.
   > So my question is, can the unaccent function be used for transformation to 7bit ASCII or is it wrong usage?
   
   You may need to turn chars to sequences.
   
   Francisco Olarte,.
   
   
   
   

9. Re: BUG #18216: Unaccent function is unable to remove accents (diacritic signs) from Japanese character 'ド'

   Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com> — 2023-11-29T10:26:23Z

   st 29. 11. 2023 v 10:16 odesílatel Francisco Olarte <folarte@peoplecall.com>
   napsal:
   
   > Hi Pavel.
   >
   > On Wed, 29 Nov 2023 at 09:45, Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com>
   > wrote:
   > > st 29. 11. 2023 v 9:13 odesílatel Francisco Olarte <
   > folarte@peoplecall.com> napsal:
   > ...
   > >> But Ñ is a proper letter, you cannot break it. Our alphabet goes
   > m-n-ñ-o-p-q.
   > > Some users use unaccent for transformation to 7bit ASCII.
   >
   > Right, I've done it manually sometimes. But I did not normaly just
   > supress the ~ , I turned año to anno ( IIRC nn was the predecessor of
   > Ñ, and it is used in similar place like "Anno domini" ) or to agno (
   > which sounds similar in French, and in things like "agnus dei qui
   > tollit pecata mundi" ( although that one has a much different meanig )
   > ).
   >
   
   Š, S, Ž, Z are different chars, different sounds - some languages use two
   chars for these sounds
   https://www.optilingo.com/blog/polish/everything-about-polish-language/ Polish
   Digraphs and Trigraphs.
   
   >
   > I was trying that normally you can supress tildes in spanish without
   > much problem, like in aviòn. Most of them just marks how to pronounce
   > them, they are useful if you do not know the word, but useless if you
   > know it. Some of them are used to differentiate things like adverbs
   > and pronoums, but in this case you can deduce it from the whole
   > phrase. But not with n/ñ. ñoño and nono are completely different and
   > unrelated words, and they even go in different "chapters" of the
   > dictionary.
   >
   > > In the Czech language I can find more examples, where removing
   > diacritics means significant loss and the meaning of the world should be
   > based only on context.
   > ...
   > That seems even more complex than French, and I've never been able to
   > cope with them!
   > > And for unaccent we expected this loss.
   > > So my question is, can the unaccent function be used for transformation
   > to 7bit ASCII or is it wrong usage?
   >
   > You may need to turn chars to sequences.
   >
   
   In Czech language we don't do it - probably nobody can read it.  We are
   trained to read it just without an accent. Lot of people write it usually,
   because it uses keywords without Czech chars, and for Czech language it is
   not too big a problem. Maybe it is wrong except for other languages, but we
   do it.
   
   Pavel
   
   
   
   > Francisco Olarte,.
   >
   

10. Re: BUG #18216: Unaccent function is unable to remove accents (diacritic signs) from Japanese character 'ド'

    Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at> — 2023-11-29T10:58:43Z

    On Wed, 2023-11-29 at 10:15 +0100, Francisco Olarte wrote:
    > On Wed, 29 Nov 2023 at 09:45, Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com> wrote:
    > 
    > > In the Czech language I can find more examples, where removing diacritics means
    > > significant loss and the meaning of the world should be based only on context.
    > ...
    > That seems even more complex than French, and I've never been able to
    > cope with them!
    
    This is far from unusual; see German:
    
     wurde (became)  <> würde (would)
     schin (already) <> schön (beautiful)
    
    Yours,
    Laurenz Albe
    >