How about "C-q a"? C-q SPC already is special-cased to mean something
different in isearch mode, so it wouldn't be a drastic change.

Of course that doesn't solve the problem for characters that are not
represented on the user's keyboard; the quick fix that comes to mind is
that quoted-insert with a negative prefix could read a character using the
input method (not using read-quoted-char), then insert it as though C-q had
been used with the corresponding positive prefix, so when using the TeX
input method, "C-- C-q \ a l p h a" would be equivalent, during isearch, to
"C-q α", to search for an alpha without an accent, breathing mark, or iota
subscriptum. (The minus sign seems logical to me because we can think of
C-q as a two-step command: switch to "literal mode", then read a character
to insert. C-- C-q does the opposite: read a character, then go into
"literal mode" to insert).

In essence, that would make C-q yet another modifier key...


On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 3:34 PM, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

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>
> Since it is possible to search for only 'á', it would be nice to have
> some convenient way to search only for 'a' with no accents.
>
> The only convenient interface I can think of is that you type, in a
> postfix input method, a ' DEL.  Currently that is equivalent to typing
> just  a.  But we could conceivably make it different.
>
> Can someone think of some other interface for this?
>
>
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
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>
>
>