search Cannot use certain Greek transliteration characters (ē and ō) in KEY search

[Steven S]

Environment

• Accordance 13.3.3
• Windows 10.0.19044

 

Description
When entering a Greek transliteration that contains the characters ē (U+0113, LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH MACRON) or ō (U+014D, LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH MACRON) as the argument of a KEY command in the search box (either via direct input or from the clipboard), Accordance expands them to the two-character sequences eœ (U+0065, LATIN SMALL LETTER E followed by U+0153, LATIN SMALL LIGATURE OE) and oœ (U+006F, LATIN SMALL LETTER O followed by U+0153, LATIN SMALL LIGATURE OE), respectively. In most cases, this causes the search to fail if the extra character (œ) is not removed before executing the search.

 

Reproduction frequency
Always.

 

Reproduction steps

1. Create a new workspace.
2. If necessary, open a new tab for the ESV with Strong's text.
3. If necessary, change the search type to Words.
4. Enter a KEY command in the search box.
5. For the KEY command argument, enter "hēmera" either via direct input or from the clipboard. Note that the argument is actually displayed as "heœmera".
6. Press ENTER to execute the search.

 

Expected behavior
Accordance should display the search results (384 hits with ESVS version 6.5).

 

Actual behavior
Accordance emits an error chime and displays the Select Key Numbers dialog with G1438, heautou selected.

 

Notes
The use case that prompted this report was copying the transliteration of ἡμέρα from my Mounce Greek Dictionary tab and pasting it as the argument of a KEY command in a text tab search box.

 

I also observed the same behavior exists when pasting the transliteration into the search box of the Mounce Greek Dictionary when the search type is set to English Content. However, if I change the search type to Transliteration, the problematic characters appear correctly.

 

Workaround
If directly inputting the transliteration, simply use the corresponding version of the problematic character without the macron (i.e., e or o). If pasting the transliteration from the clipboard, remove the extra character added by Accordance (œ) before executing the search. Accordance appears to execute the search correctly when using the non-macron version of the problematic characters.
 

[Mark Allison]

Don't use a macron. Simply input "hemera".

[Steven S]

1 hour ago, Mark Allison said:

Don't use a macron. Simply input "hemera".

 

Thanks, @Mark Allison. I realized after the fact that I could do that if I was directly inputting the key argument via the keyboard. However, as I noted above, my use case was copying the transliteration from another Accordance resource, which does use the macron, and pasting it as the key argument. Unless there's an overload of the copy command I'm not familiar with that strips macrons, I'm still forced to delete any additional œ characters Accordance adds when pasting.

[Mark Allison]

11 hours ago, Steven S said:

 

Thanks, @Mark Allison. I realized after the fact that I could do that if I was directly inputting the key argument via the keyboard. However, as I noted above, my use case was copying the transliteration from another Accordance resource, which does use the macron, and pasting it as the key argument. Unless there's an overload of the copy command I'm not familiar with that strips macrons, I'm still forced to delete any additional œ characters Accordance adds when pasting.

I'll post that as a feature request.