Let me apologize in advance: This is a much more basic question than what I have been seeing on this list. I have been struggling with using the PTS dictionary online for about three months now, thinking surely my difficulties would resolve with just random trying of things. Now I am looking for help.

THE PROBLEM: The PTS dictionary seems unpredictable in whether it returns a response when a diacritic is entered in the search box. For example: I looked up aññāṇa and saw that the etymology was [a + ñāṇa]. I cut and pasted ñāṇa and got nothing. I progressively truncated it, receiving nothing, up to just ñ --still, 0 entries. Tried other methods of entering my ñ--0 entries. There are no words in this dictionary beginning with ñ? (The Gair and Karunatillake reader lists 6 entries in its glossary beginning with ñ.) Similarly, a search for words beginning with ā returns only two words! (I just don't believe it.)

Sometimes, however, it seems to return an appropriate result. When it returns an unlikely result, however, it persists over weeks with the same unlikely result (only two words beginning ā, for example).

SOME TECHNICAL SPECIFICS: am using a Mac running OSX 10.6.8, Safari, my default font is Times New Roman (a unicode-enabled font), and my default encoding is UTF-8. I have tried Firefox a few times, the results have the same problems.

Typically I am selecting "Search entry words only (not definitions)" and "Words starting with." (Tho, yes, I have tried other search parameters.) Typically, I am truncating material at the end--often truncating progressively more material until I get a result that I can scroll through. Sometimes this works--but too often it gets me nothing.

I have tried using Edit>Special Characters>Insert to insert characters with diacritics AND have tried copying and pasting my word from the PTS text (generally accessed through accesstoinsight.org) AND have tried copying and pasting my word from a PTS dictionary entry: same results.

Please excuse the rudimentary nature of this inquiry; I would be most grateful for any help anyone can give. Thank you.