Re: chinese case in current languagechooser (was Re: Languagechooser changes)

[Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org>]

Quoting Carlos Z.F. Liu (carlos_liu@yahoo.com):

> In languagechooser, use
> 
>     zh    - ...(Choose this to proceed in Simplified Chinese)...
>     zh    - ...(Choose this to proceed in Traditional Chinese)...
> 
> The first one use zh_CN translation, the second one use zh_TW (though there is
> no traditional chinese translation yet -_- ). And whichever user selected,
> countrychooser should always be triggered.

I have to investigate whether this scheme may work. Others opinions
welcomed of course.

I knew this would trigger problems..:-)

My personal analysis of all this:

The origin for this mess is the lack of an appropriate ISO 639 code
for each of both Chinese languages, while they are clearly different
languages as you explained.

I'm pretty sure there are strong political implicaitons behind this,
but indeed there should be "zh" for one of both flavours and something
else for the other one (or two other codes if this is sensitive enough)

zh_CN meaning "Simplified Chinese" is a trick. This means "Chinese as
spoken in China". And zh_TW means "Chinese as spoken in Taiwan".

I imagine the day we will end up with zh_CN and zh_TW
translations. People who choose "zh     - Traditional Chinese" at
languagechooser will then get the countrychooser list with China,
Taiwan, Hong-Kong.

If they choose "China" (why not, after all?), they will get zh_CN as
locale....and then continue in Simplified Chinese.

If they choose "Taiwan", they're OK

If they choose Hong-Kong....they will get zh_HK as locale.....and
continue in English...:-)

Generally speaking the _YY trick for choosing one language flavour is
BAD. If two languages are different enough for triggering different
translations they should NOT share the same ISO 639 code.

So, whatever scheme is chosen, we will end up with strange
situations. Thus, just because some political problems prevent China
and/or Taiwan to request ISO a second language code...:-(

Norwegian is the example to follow-->they have two codes for their two
flavours and that is Good.