Re: Bug(?!) in debian.org

[Gerfried Fuchs <alfie@ist.org>]

* Jaime E . Villate <villate@fe.up.pt> [2001-10-18 08:19]:
> If this had been translated rather as:
>   "<P><A href="http://www.debian.org/index.es.html";>Debian</A> es un sistema
>    operativo (SO) <A href="intro/free.es.html">libre</A>, para su computadora."
> 
> one would end up getting Spanish pages, when following the links, regardless
> of browser settings.

.... and regardless of translation status, right.  This proposal makes
it nearly impossible to maintain the pages, because for each new
translated page one would have to scan through all the other pages if
there are translations available.  Not to forget that maybe a translated
file might be removed.

 If you change the scripts to address that problem we might discuss if
it is a good idea - until there is no solution for that I personally
would vote against changes in that direction.

> Even without changing anything in the translations, when
> the html pages are build links like intro/free could be substituted by
> intro/free.{LANG}.html, if that page exists.

 Feel free to submit a patch to make this work.  Could sound
interesting, but please remember:  Once there is a page not translated,
you fall back to the english pages and will _stick_ with the english
pages, unless you don't change to that in the english versions of the
files.  It would be a counter-work against content negotiation, e.g. for
people that have something like de,fr,en or such setups.

 So your sugguestion might sound nice on the first glance, but would
only work correct if _all_ the pages are translated - which they are not
for even a single language.

 So long,
Alfie
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