Re: Current status of content negotiation
> How's the current status of content negotiation for the web pages?
>
I'm glad you asked. There are two things that need to be done before I
ask for translators. I get a slow, but steady, stream of complaints that
our main page is ugly and boring. Some of the critics have offered to create
new versions but when I tell them no frames and not too many graphics
they run away. I'd like to see a nice background added to the page and better
use of tables for an improved layout.
Content negotiation is the point you raised and the other thing that
HAS to be done before we inflict this upon the world. None of the solutions
to make the pages come up with a default language worked well enough, in my
opinion, to warrant the extra work involved. Thus, any web server that doesn't
implement content negotiation will not work.
Here is the status of content negotiation on the different web mirrors:
www.debian.org not set up (haven't bothered yet. I'm setting a bad example :)
www.at.debian.org not working. I'll write to Georg.
www.au.debian.org working
www.de.debian.org working
www.fr.debian.org working
www.il.debian.org not working. They're working on it.
www.jp.debian.org working
www.kr.debian.org not working. Haven't heard back from them.
www.nl.debian.org working
www.es.debian.org working
www.us.debian.org not working. Mike told me he set it up, but I just
checked and it doesn't appear to work.
> Debian JP has translated some of the important pages. But neither
> completed nor released yet. If someone is actually working, I'll ask
> some volunteers to make JP version up-to-date so that we can release
> them to the public.
>
Great. Any pages already translated will speed things up later.
FYI, the way links will be done under CN is that the .html will be left off
all links. Under CN, the server will make a list of possible files to serve
using the filename given as a base and deliver the one at the top of the list
(priorities are set up by the server and the client has the option of only
allowing certain types).
If there is an exact match, that file is served. This is unfortunate as I'd
prefer to specify URLs keeping the .html on the link. This would allow us
to simply add a language suffix to the files and a CN enabled server would
do the right thing. A machine without CN would also work as there would be
a link between *.html and *.en.html .
Some examples might help for those unfamiliar with this.
LanguagePriority is the language variable in apache. preferred_language
can be (optionally) passed by a web browser.
The current plan:
Available files: news.en.html news.de.html
URL: news
LanguagePriority preferred_language File Served
en fr de not specified news.en.html
en fr de de en news.en.html
en fr de de news.de.html
en fr de fr news.en.html
en fr de kr news.en.html
If no CN this doesn't work at all.
If:
Available files: news.en.html news.de.html news.html
URL: news.html
Then news.html is always served, CN or no CN.
The way I'd like to see CN work:
Available files: new.en.html news.de.html news.html
URL: news.html
LanguagePriority preferred_language File Served
en fr de de news.de.html
en fr de de en news.en.html
en fr de not specified news.en.html
en fr de kr news.de.html
If no CN index.html would simply be served, just as you'd expect.
It is possible to do more complicated things using .var files
but I believe this is apache specific, adds complexity and
doesn't quite get us what we want.
- Jay
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