The first-run setup wizard lets new users configure a few common options (file organization, cover art, metadata, updates). It does not currently expose the "Convert Unicode punctuation to ASCII" setting, which many users want to decide on early because it affects how tags look.

Add a question to the wizard's "Additional Metadata" page, wired to the existing convert_punctuation setting. When enabled, typographic Unicode punctuation in tags is replaced with plain ASCII equivalents: mainly curly apostrophes (’) become straight single quotes ('), curly double quotes (“”) become straight quotes ("), and dashes (—) become hyphens (-).

The option is off by default (matching the current default) and can still be changed later under Options > Options > Metadata.

Expected: The wizard shows a "Convert Unicode punctuation to ASCII" checkbox on the Additional Metadata page, initialized from and saved to the convert_punctuation setting.

 

Background / motivation:

Curly/typographic apostrophes and quotes coming from the MusicBrainz database are a recurring source of confusion and player/tool compatibility complaints. Across the community forums the standard advice for years has been to enable the existing "Convert Unicode punctuation to ASCII" metadata option (e.g. apostrophe standardization, "replace the MusicBrainz apostrophe with a normal one", strict pattern matching). 

Note that convert_punctuation operates on the metadata itself, so the conversion also flows through to filenames generated from the tags (it is not a filename-only option).

 

Out of scope (intentionally):

The separate "Replace non-ASCII characters" option (ascii_filenames) is deliberately NOT added to the wizard. It is a filename-only, lossy transliteration that strips characters with no ASCII equivalent (e.g. Cyrillic, CJK), and experienced users often recommend keeping it disabled to avoid mangling non-Latin names. It remains available under Options > File Naming > Compatibility, off by default.