Bare-ASCII Search Plugin
************************

The "bareasc" plugin provides a prefixed query that searches your
library using simple ASCII character matching, with accented
characters folded to their base ASCII character. This can be useful if
you want to find a track with accented characters in the title or
artist, particularly if you are not confident you have the accents
correct. It is also not unknown for the accents to not be correct in
the database entry or wrong in the CD information.

First, enable the plugin named "bareasc" (see Using Plugins). You'll
then be able to use the "#" prefix to use bare-ASCII matching:

   $ beet ls '#dvorak'
   István Kertész - REQUIEM - Dvořàk: Requiem, op.89 - Confutatis maledictis


Command
=======

In addition to the query prefix, the plugin provides a utility
"bareasc" command. This command is **exactly** the same as the "beet
list" command except that the output is passed through the bare-ASCII
transformation before being printed. This allows you to easily check
what the library data looks like in bare ASCII, which can be useful if
you are trying to work out why a query is not matching.

Using the same example track as above:

   $ beet bareasc 'Dvořàk'
   Istvan Kertesz - REQUIEM - Dvorak: Requiem, op.89 - Confutatis maledictis

Note: the "bareasc" command does *not* automatically use bare-ASCII
queries. If you want a bare-ASCII query you still need to specify the
"#" prefix.


Notes
=====

If the query string is all in lower case, the comparison ignores case
as well as accents.

The default "bareasc" prefix ("#") is used as a comment character in
some shells so may need to be protected (for example in quotes) when
typed into the command line.

The bare ASCII transliteration is quite simple. It may not give the
expected output for all languages. For example, German u-umlaut "ü" is
transformed into ASCII "u", not into "ue".

The bare ASCII transformation also changes Unicode punctuation like
double quotes, apostrophes and even some hyphens. It is often best to
leave out punctuation in the queries. Note that the punctuation
changes are often not even visible with normal terminal fonts. You can
always use the "bareasc" command to print the transformed entries and
use a command like "diff" to compare with the output from the "list"
command.


Configuration
=============

To configure the plugin, make a "bareasc:" section in your
configuration file. The only available option is:

* **prefix**: The character used to designate bare-ASCII queries.
  Default: "#", which may need to be escaped in some shells.


Credits
=======

The hard work in this plugin is done in Sean Burke's Unidecode
library. Thanks are due to Sean and to all the people who created the
Python version and the beets extensible query architecture.
