GeoNames Forum

I'm using geonames api's service "search" with parameter "name_startsWith" and I got problem with cyrillic letter "ь".

So for example when I want to found city "Хмельницький" with parameter
"name_startsWith" I found nothing. But when I don't use letter "ь", but just first 4 letters like "Хмел" I get first result that I need.

The same problem I found with all cities that using letter "ь".

Examples of queries:
so here works ok
http://api.geonames.org/search?name_startsWith=Хмел&lang=uk&orderby=relevance&featureClass=p&style=full&username=demo&maxrows=3

found nothing:
http://api.geonames.org/search?name_startsWith=Хмель&lang=uk&orderby=relevance&featureClass=p&style=full&username=demo&maxrows=3

And here is my JS code:
http://plnkr.co/edit/lT5FzfeMmN7YY36ooHod

One more point. I have checked one topic about encoding special characters , but I got the same result and anyway as I remember ajax provide encoding "UTF8" by default and I found problem only with letter "ь".

Thx.

Hey guys, do you have some ideas how I could fix that? Thx