413927 - Title search does not match equivalent characters, such as ASCII and Unicode apostrophes

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[Kelson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.9b2) Gecko/2007121016 Firefox/3.0b2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.9b2) Gecko/2007121016 Firefox/3.0b2

If a page title contains, for instance, "Where’s Waldo" (using the proper unicode character or charcode for a right single quote/apostrophe), typing the phrase "Where's Waldo" (using the straight-up-and-down ASCII apostrophe, which is right on the keyboard and therefore much easier to type) should match.  As far as the end-user is concerned, those titles are the same.  Autocomplete misses it, though, because they are technically different characters.

There are a number of cases like this:

- Left and right single quotes, and a single prime, all map to the ascii apostrophe
- Left and right double quotes, and a double prime, are all more easily typed as the ascii quotation mark.
- There are em dashes, en dashes, hyphens, etc. that are often substituted with an ASCII hyphen.
- An ellipsis is more naturally typed as three or more periods.

etc.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Visit a page that uses non-ASCII typography in the title
2. Enter that section of the title using the equivalent characters on the keyboard

Actual Results:  
The search matches until the user types in the punctuation that uses different characters for the same meaning, at which point the result disappears.

Expected Results:  
The search should match.

Several cases are listed here, with the various characters used for proper typography and their keyboard equivalents: http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~ggbaker/reference/characters/

Comment 1

[Ryan Hickman]

Confirmed -
Build Info:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2008012104 Minefield/3.0b3pre

This is somewhat version specific, as only the 3.0 branch provides you with the autocomplete box below the location bar. I'd say its safe to change the version to match.

Comment 2

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.