FIRST PROBLEM:
There is a significant problem when searching for an author name that includes the apostrophe character, for example " O'Donnell. "
If a citation that was imported has a special apostrophe character instead of the ASCII apostrophe character (as is generated directly the keyboard), the search function will not find a match.
Also, if searching for (for example) O'Donnell, this search string -- *Donnell -- will not find instances of the name that have a special apostrophe character.
SECOND PROBLEM:
In fact, I now find a second problem with the search problem, because a beginning "*" in the search always causes a failure.
This works: Sch* (finding lots of names in my database).
But this gives a blank result: *ch* (even though it should return the same list as the other string).
Example: *Don* (does not find my O'Donnell record that has the special apostrophe character, or anything else for that matter).
1. Special apostrophe is not
1. Special apostrophe is not supported in the Fast Search.
2. Wildcard can only be used at the end of a search term.
.
So is there anyway in Biblioscape that I can be sure I am finding all papers with an apostrophe in the a searched name, even if the apostrophe is a non-ASCII variant of the character?
I note that the "?" wildcard doesn't work for this either (as in: O?Donnell). It would be really handy if that could be implemented.
There are probably similar problems with searches that miss the various European accented characters, which frequently appear in author lists in imported citations.
Records that can't be accessed when needed are essentially "lost work," so I suggest attention to this in a future patch or major version should be a priority. Perhaps a look-up table of character equivalencies could be built into the search routine, as well as providing for fully flexible use of wildcard characters.
The current database engine
The current database engine doesn't support Unicode. So full text index cannot handle those special characters. This problem will be solved in the next major release which will support Unicode.