The French do something similar, as do the Germans. They've had relatively little luck with substantial changes recently, though. The 1990 French reforms were rather trivial. For example. the placement of the diaeresis was shifted to the first vowel in some digraphs. So "aiguë" (acute, sharp) is now "aigüe" since it is two syllables, but the former spelling misleadingly hints at three syllables. That one seems to have been well-accepted. Many of the other reforms have been only partially accepted, or explicitly rejected by many speakers. (I don't think I am ever going to get used to "ognon" for onion.)