Dick: if the songs are in the DB in a strange html format, that certainly doesn't mean I have to use exactly that format in the search queries? It's the people that contribute and edit songs that would have to use that, not those who query the database. The DB is already flexible with the case of letters and with the order of words entered in the query. For instance I typed the query Picnic for and I got:

1) BOB, THE PEDIGREE SHEEPDOG

And his picnic taste for salmon paste
Now at Sheepdog Trials they come for miles
For our littermen to clean up.

2) TEDDY BEARS PICNIC

For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

3) WAIT TILL THE SUN SHINES NELLIE

"There's a picnic, too, at the old Point View,
"How I long," she sighed, "for a trolley ride
For the sun came shining down.

If the search is already that flexible, then why can't the engine search for words inside specific html tags and find the relevant songs. The ordinary visitor asking for a song would get an answer, even with accents added on the words he typed in, and not see anything strange about that.

There remains the work of editing the songs to produce such a format. I'm under the impression that it's not harder than entering the whole song twice, once with the accents and once without, but I haven't tried entering and checking hundreds of songs to the DB...

RS., about the usefulness of accents/foreign characters in foreign songs, having the accents is not just useful for people who know the language. Once I learnt some songs in Swedish with a choir over there. I can't speak a word of Swedish (Actually I spoke four: kan du prata fraskan, can you speak French), and having the lyrics very exactly written, accents and all, really helped.
Also I'm persuaded the pressure to include songs in foreign languages may be a trickle now but will grow in the future. I haven't found anything similar to the mudcat for songs in other languages, and there's more and more languages being used more and more often on the net... It's one of its big advantages (I think) to cut accross boundaries. Maybe internationalising this DB is not the solution? But maybe we're just letting a revolution pass us by?

Charles