Bug 169119 - Accented characters in hyperlinks [autocorrect URL]
Summary: Accented characters in hyperlinks [autocorrect URL]
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
24.2.2.2 release
Hardware: All Linux (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2025-10-28 19:08 UTC by gallard
Modified: 2025-11-03 17:51 UTC (History)
0 users

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


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Description gallard 2025-10-28 19:08:21 UTC
Description:
According to CIRA (Canadian domain registry), it must be possible to use accented characters in domain names. It is actually impossible to enter an accented character in LibreOffice.
ref:https://www.cira.ca/fr/domaines-ca/enregistrez-votre-nom-de-domaine-ca/domains-french-accented-characters/

Steps to Reproduce:
1.école.ca
2.
3.

Actual Results:
<blank> (rejected)

Expected Results:
école.ca


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
https://www.cira.ca/fr/domaines-ca/enregistrez-votre-nom-de-domaine-ca/domains-french-accented-characters/
Comment 1 fpy 2025-10-29 16:30:27 UTC
please provide more details  : https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugReport#Good_reports

the steps to reproduce,
what is "rejected",
...

Note: https://cirâ.ca/ or  école.ca  do not exist. 
  an existing example would be nice.
Comment 2 gallard 2025-10-30 14:09:29 UTC
In 2012, CIRA introduced support for the full range of French characters in .CA domain names.
https://www.cira.ca/en/ca-domains/register-your-ca/domains-french-accented-characters/
https://www.icann.org/en/icann-acronyms-and-terms?page=1&search=idn
But people refrain using it, becaue many softwares do not accept them. 
For example, Firefox with DuckDuckGo search engine; if you enter "école.ca" in search bar, DuckDuckGo will not consider it is a valid URL and will treat is as a search phrase. If you enter "ecole,ca" as the search bar, DuckDuckGo will give it to Firefox to be interpreted as a URL.
Sameway, if I enter "http://www.école.ca" into LO writer, it will not recognize it as a valid URL and will not enter the URL in hyperlink attribute.
To add confusion, it I enter "québec.ca" into Firefox address bar, it will be automatically replaced by "quebec.ca" (drop of the accent),
What a mess!
For all these reasons, people do not create domain names with accents but would like it.
That's why I cannot provide an existing domain name with accented characters. Many probably exist but I don't know any.
Comment 3 gallard 2025-10-30 18:50:18 UTC
Update: it's worse than I thought.
I found an existing website with an accented domain name: "québec.ca". If I enter "http://québec.ca" in a LO text, the hyperlink is not recognized and the hyperlink attribute is not set.
But it's worse with Firefox.
If I enter "québec.ca" in Firefox address bar, Firefox will immediately substitute "quebec.ca", removing the accent. But "québec.ca" is a real domain name and, thus, it is an unreachable site thru Firefox.
Conclusion: it is a very confusing situation. LO is problematic but Firefox and DuckDuckGo are also problematic.
Chromium (Version 136) has the same problem.
Konqueror (version 23) has the same problem.
So I suspect the problem may be in a common library.
Comment 4 fpy 2025-10-31 06:05:13 UTC
let's try to be specify.

(In reply to gallard from comment #2)
> ... I enter "http://www.école.ca" into LO writer, it will not
> recognize it as a valid URL and will not enter the URL in hyperlink
> attribute.

okay. marrking as duplicate of 69599


> To add confusion, it I enter "québec.ca" into Firefox address bar, it will
> be automatically replaced by "quebec.ca" (drop of the accent),

that's common sense normalization. the same way QUEBEC.CA -> quebec.ca

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 69599 ***
Comment 5 gallard 2025-10-31 19:59:57 UTC
Marking 169119 as a duplicate of 65999 does not RESOLVE the problem. Libreoffice consider that "www.québec.ca" is an invalid URL but it's officially valid according to CIRA rules.
Validating after normalization may be a solution but it's not perfect. Validating thru an online DNS server may be a better solution but it will not work if user if offline.
I consider the problem is still UNRESOLVED.
Comment 6 fpy 2025-11-01 11:01:36 UTC
(In reply to gallard from comment #5)
> Libreoffice consider that "www.québec.ca" is an invalid URL 

where is that written? an error message?
see #Good_reports mentionned earlier.

> Validating after normalization may be a solution but it's not perfect.
> Validating thru an online DNS server may be a better solution but it will
> not work if user if offline.

IMHO, sounds just totally out of scope of Office apps to DNS what a user writes;
next steps would be to make sure a URL is responsive ?

> I consider the problem is still UNRESOLVED.

would be nice to *also (ad mostly) consider* what process the community tries to work with : https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Bugzilla/Fields/Status

but of course, you free not to contribute.
Comment 7 gallard 2025-11-03 17:22:03 UTC
http://québec.ca and http://www.quebec.ca are 2 URL identifying the same domain. The first is the real (official) one and the second is automatically created by CIRA to solve the problem of softwares doing "normalization".
If I enter the  second in LO Writer, I can see that LO automatically underline it, confirming it is a hyperlink. But if I enter the first, it will not automatically underline, suggesting the URL syntax is not valid.
To solve the problem, LO should validate after normalization.
Comment 8 fpy 2025-11-03 17:51:15 UTC
(In reply to gallard from comment #7)
> To solve the problem, 

totally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

and to stop fixating on "domain", just try 
québec@qq.ca 
quebec@qq.ca 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_email

definitely a duplicate of 69599