Add support for macrons (e.g. Māori language) and other indigenous characters

[GISOfficer]

The Māori language uses macrons above vowels to lengthen them; as part of New Zealand's bicultural foundations it is appropriate to insert macrons into maps, services etc. in order to correctly display names.  Currently ArcGIS does not support macrons, so we request that this be changed in order to be able to make our map and data outputs culturally appropriate.

Request courtesy of Hurunui District Council and Kaikōura District Council, Canterbury, NZ

I have edited this to request support for other indigenous languages where possible, in light of my Australian friend's comment.  Of course indigenous peoples worldwide should be represented by ESRI in their products :).

[TeamLeader]

This more broadly applied would be of great help for my organisation too as we have use Indigenous Australian languages in all our data sets. We have special characters in place names like Muṯitjulu. 

Could special characters be supported in definition queries too. Currently this functionality is not supported.

arcgis-pro-2.4‌ definition-query #special characters

[geodoozer]

A workaround is to type the Māori into Word and copy and paste, but onboard support would be cool!

[GISOfficer]

Have tried this into a layout in Pro with no success, but I think there's something wider needed like a Māori language pack or toggle for special characters.  I don't know exactly how it works but it would be good.  A lot of our outputs and titling are data-driven pages/map series/apps so it needs to be programmatically supported across the desktop, enterprise and online suite for apps.

[CraigWilliams]

Can you provide more examples of where this isn't working? Below is an example of macrons drawing with labeling.

As for the definition query case, we'd need more specific information on the data source type being used there.

[JodieRobertson]

One example is the inability to export features to GPX if the name field contains macrons (i.e. Māori placenames).

[EOS_GeospatialTeam]

@CraigWilliams I am the OP here (changed jobs since) but it's a comprehensive language implementation across the board I would say, so wherever possible but particularly in the names of things, labels, attribute values etc.  Given that I posted this in 2019 I cannot recall the specific situation or what wasn't working, but I do not recall macrons being supported for many text-based Pro features at the time.  It's good that it works for labels now however.