The title modifications don't bother me too much, but I do offer an alternate solution. Allow each user on user settings to have a special "pre-title" field which with they can put their pre-title bits. Then, also add a setting "Node pre-titles" with options of "On", "On, ASCII-stripped" and "Off". The second option would convert any non ASCII character to a space or similar. Then, when nodes are collected, the titles are dynamically modified to include those pre-titles or modified versions of them, or none at all, which would appear to satisfy most of the user's comments on this issue.

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Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain
"I can see my house from here!"
It's not what you know, but knowing how to find it if you don't know that's important