Q2A search relevancy with accented language is ZERO

Question

It seems Q2A removes accents in search module. For example, right in this Q2A forum, if you search for these words, you can have a lot of results.

• quéstions
• quêstions
• quẹstions
• quèstions
• quẽstions
• quẹstions

In my language, if the words have different accents, they have different meanings.

For example:

ban means to give, to bless, or department

bàn means table or desk

bán means to sell

bạn means friend or friends

bản means version; sheet; or remote mountainous hamlet

There are much more like that:

bắn : to shoot (with a gun or a bow)

bận : busy

bần : poor, also a name of a rice sauce

bẩn : dirty, untidy

And the relevancy of Q2A search module is Zero.

Any solution?

Answer 1

If you want to do an accent-sensitive MySQL query, you have to either modify the query with COLLATE parameters, or you have to change your database collation type.

The so-called Q2A simple search module is not as simple as its name says. It employs dozens of functions. The issue with Q2A is you don't know where to modify the SQL query with COLLATE attributes.

This forces me to use the other choice, which is changing the database collation type. For those who have the same interest, the keyword is utf8_bin.