Ability to use symbols in labels

It would be very helpful if we could use symbols in our labels. Gmail allows us to use symbols such as underscores, spaces, and hyphens within label names. Many Gmail customers use those symbols to change the sort order of their labels (e.g. "_label" always appears at the very top of the label list) but Gmail Backup doesn't support such labels.

By the way, is this forum still supported by the product developers? It seems to be overrun with spam!