Deaccent unicode strings

gist.py

# Deaccent unicode strings.
#
# unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', unicodestring): do a compatibility
# decomposition of the unicode string
#
# unicodedata.category(somecharacter): Find the unicode category 
# for a character. Category 'Mn' contains all combining accents

import unicodedata

def deaccent(some_unicode_string):
    return u''.join(c for c in unicodedata.normalize('NFD', some_unicode_string)
               if unicodedata.category(c) != 'Mn')