This article is about a failure to do normalization properly and is not really about an issue with Unicode. Regardless what some comments seem to allude to, an Umlaut-ü should always render <i>exactly</i> the same, no matter how it is encoded.<p>There is, however, a real ü/ü conundrum, regarding ü-Umlaut and ü-diaeresis. The ü's in the words Müll and aigüe <i>should</i> render differently. The dots in the French word are too close to the letter. In printed French material this is usually not the case.<p>Unfortunately Unicode does not capture the nuance of the semantic difference between an Umlaut and a Tréma or Diaresis.<p>The Umlaut is a letter in its own right with its own space in the alphabet. An ü-Umlaut can <i>never</i> be replaced by an <i>u</i> alone. This would be just as wrong as replacing a <i>p</i> by a <i>q</i>. Just because they look similar does not mean they are interchangeable. [1]<p>The Tréma on the other hand, is a modifier that helps with proper pronunciation of letter combinations. It is <i>not</i> a letter in its own right, just additional information. It can sometimes move over other adjacent letters (aiguë=aigüe, both are possible) too.<p>Some say this should be handled by the rendering system similar to Han-Unification, but I strongly disagree with this. French words are often used in German and vice versa. Currently there is no way to render a German loan word with Umlaut (e.g. führer) properly in French.<p>[1] The only acceptable replacement for ü-Umlaut is the combination <i>ue</i>.