normalize gitconfig's author field to UTF-8 NFC

src/poetry/console/commands/init.py

@@ -456,10 +456,12 @@ def _format_requirements(self, requirements: list[dict[str, str]]) -> Requiremen
 
         return requires
 
-    def _validate_author(self, author: str, default: str) -> str | None:
+    @staticmethod
+    def _validate_author(author: str, default: str) -> str | None:
         from poetry.core.packages.package import AUTHOR_REGEX
+        from poetry.core.utils.helpers import combine_unicode
 
-        author = author or default
+        author = combine_unicode(author or default)
 
         if author in ["n", "no"]:
             return None

tests/console/commands/test_init.py

@@ -993,6 +993,22 @@ def test_validate_package_invalid(name: str) -> None:
         assert InitCommand._validate_package(name)
 
 
+@pytest.mark.parametrize(
+    "author",
+    [
+        str(b"Jos\x65\xcc\x81 Duarte", "utf-8"),
+        str(b"Jos\xc3\xa9 Duarte", "utf-8"),
+    ],
+)
+def test_validate_author(author: str) -> None:
+    """
+    This test was added following issue #8779, hence, we're looking to see if the test
+    no longer throws an exception, hence the seemingly "useless" test of just running
+    the method.
+    """
+    InitCommand._validate_author(author, "")
+
+
 @pytest.mark.parametrize(
     "package_name, include",
     (