After reading a good deal of post re charset and collation, I am very
confused.

I will have English (british), German and french users, entering data
in the very same fields with or without accents, with a combination of
upper and lowercase.

Problem 1: I need all of them to query the data with or without
accents, and with possibly a combination of upper and lowercase. This
is the most pressing issue. The search is achieved using either exact
combination or Like (STARTING WITH)

Problem 2: when sorting by that field, I would ideally like to have
the sort order case and accent insensitive. If this cannot be
achieved, I can probably leave with that.

What is the correct (or best) combination or charset/collation using
fb 1.5, Bearing in mind that the database is queried via a delphi
application and via a php-based browser front end.

Thanks a lot for your help
Didier