In 2011, locale-based sort is still broken or headache-inducing on many machines, and POSIX or C locales are the unassailable default in a shocking number of places. (For a fun exercise, try relying on LC_COLLATE for sorting in OS X.)
This is a shameful PHP-based hack that mimics proper sorting for English using iconv transliteration. If doing things the WRONG WAY offends you, avert your eyes. However, this has worked for me in a pinch when I don’t have time to track down a box that has its i18n together.
Short version: Sort correctly with “special characters.”
Download a text file containing the source code of this page.
This is free software. It is released to the public domain without warranty.