Two related issues were raised to do with accented characters in usernames and first names / last names.
1) Accented characters are allowed in usernames but links to user profiles should be escaped so that URLs do not rely on accented characters. We put in custom validation for usernames right from the get go to allow accents, letters, numbers and underscores in usernames. Some early usernames also have spaces and apostrophes in them, but this was tightened up so that usernames are all one word in line with most sites of this ilk. Links to profiles should now use escaping so that a link to view the profile of a user called "eòin" will now be written as
/users/view/e%C3%B2in
Most browsers will still display this as
/users/view/eòin
when you visit the page, but it is now properly escaped behind the scenes.
2) Accented characters in first and last names were being "sanitized" to remove any non alphanumeric characters. The level of sanitization has been lowered now so that accented characters are allowed in first and last names. Unfortunately, if you've already had your accents crunched, you'll need to edit your profile to put your accents back in as we have no way of telling who has or hasn't lost their accents up to now.
Thanks to user "caoimhin" for this valuable input.
