RE: Correction for links in documentations

[arto.astala@nokia.com]

It may also be a browser bug, maybe it would be useful to
verify that and add warning to languages doc. That way also
responses to those users who complain would be much more
informative.

Basically, this was what it meant to me when I had a short
discussion with Joey:

- my browser (NS 4.06) was configured for en, en-us, en-gb
- Joeys test cgi received the header and it only had
  en-us & en-gb, no generic en anywhere
- in Debian main site I always got Polish install page
- for some reason in Debian main web site the install guide
  was the only page I found that behaved strangely, on
  mirrors also the front page and others were in different
  languages, but within each mirror the language stayed the
  same

For me this indicates at least the following:

(for this stuff there really isn't anything to do but
documentation)
- content negotiation algorithm is counter-intuitive, since
  it requires presence of both variant and generic tag to
  produce expected result, however this is how it is defined
  and there are several valid reasons for it
- my browser is broken, I removed language tags and stayed
  happy

(this you might be able to fix, if you want it badly enough)
- implementation of content negotiation has a bug that
  produces semi-random behavior
    maybe some index is off by one and first or last language
    (time order or collating order) is given as result
- structure of the site is not friendly to my broken browser
  or to people with broken configuration
    if you have only generic en page, you could make links to
    it from variant codes (I know this kind of defeats some
    functionality in negotiation, but maybe it still is better
    to serve  most of the people reasonably well than to serve to
    perfection those people who want e.g. 'en-ca, fr-ca, en')

However, I may be completely off here, since my testing was a
really small scale use only and I really do not know much about
content negotiation.

HTH
t.aa

> -----Original Message-----
> From: EXT Will Trillich [mailto:will@serensoft.com]
> Sent: 06 September, 2000 18:58
> To: debian-doc@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: Correction for links in documentations
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 06, 2000 at 08:22:16AM -0400, Laurent Hubert wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > It's a pleasure to see that the documentation is now update 
> to "potato".
> > And that "potato" meet it's promises to work with PowerPC.  
> In my case 
> > PowerPC 604  (Motorola's PowerStack).
> > 
> > Nevertheless, please take note that at the page
> > 
> http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/powerpc/release-notes/ch
> -installing.en.html
> > 
> > The link http://www.debian.org/releases/2.2/powerpc/install
> > lead to a page that is in a language that is not english, 
> french or spanish.
> 
> the debian website has 'content negotiation' enabled, which is
> [...]
> the server.
> 
> [you're NOT the first to run into this and think something
> is screwy with the website. i just checked the link you
> posted and it came across in english for me. in netscape,
> my preferences are under edit menu -> preferences ->
> navigator -> languages; mine are set for english (en),
> english-united states (en-US), english-united kingdom (en-GB),
> and french (fr). someday i'll see a french page and forget
> that i asked for it!]
> [...]