[Spellyans] dictionnaire de l'Académie française

[Michael Everson]

On 29 Jan 2011, at 18:52, Eddie Climo wrote:

> In this official A.F. Dictionnaire, you may type in your French query word with or without diacritics, just as you please: Académie/Academie, Française/Francaise, dépôt/depot all according to the choice of the writer! Dar!

Excuse me, but....

I think you have mistaken input method equivalence with orthography.

In French orthography, diacritical marks are not optional. They are simply how words are spelt. When one learns how to spell, one learns the words with their diacritical marks. 

An input method strategy for data searching which chooses to ignore diacritical marks is a reasonable expedient since the aim is to find lexical items. Not to spell them. 

This does not however mean that diacritical marks are "optional" in French. 

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/