Re: Web pages/Debian/languages: Great!
Royandrecrabtree@aol.com:
> I) It might be better to have language references at the TOP of the
> structure instead of the bottom.
That would take up too much room at the top of the page, which would
require you to scroll down to read every single page. I doubt that
would be a good idea.
> II) A standardized presentation in minimal form would be better, to
> minimize the space taken up.
The name of the language, IMHO, *is* the best representation of the
language, since it is guaranteed to be understood by the reader.
> A) A right click (or other launch method) for a drop down menu to
> select.
Drop down menus are obscure, and take place to find. You'll also need
to know that you can find your language there to start looking.
> B) Country flag icon, Language icon, plus country name and language
> name
Country flags are particularly poor to use for identifying languages.
> C) Presentation in the language currenlty in as well as the
> language going to (including ordering as expected inn that language)
> by each column [country or language]
The main representation must always be in the target language, since
you are about to switch *to* it. It is completely useless for me to see
the word "Suèdois" on a French page if I don't know that that is the
word for "Swedish". Anyway, the language name in the *current* language
*is* available, it is used as the link title, just hover the mouse over
the language link and you'll see it.
> ^) Do you default by IP address to country of origin or other
> content negotiation standard?
IP addresses are also a poor choice for selecting languages. Currently,
that would give me French pages, although I cannot read that language.
Several big European cable tv ISPs are known to use the "wrong" IP
ranges for their customers. Also, many countries are bi-lingual.
The only variable used to determine the language for the pages is the
setting for preferred language in the web browser, as this is the only
setting that is reliable.
> 1) Japanese, two iconographies
What do you mean?
> H) You migt want to consider adding drop down menus (with
> alternates) for browser configuration to be done automatically by the
> server (or at least to build a complete script or instruction file
> customized)
The web page cannot do anything about the browser configuration. All we
can do is provide instructions on how to use it - which we do
<URL:http://www.debian.org/intro/cn>.
> I) Places to get fonts and so forth for each manguage would be useful.
People that read a language would usually already have configured their
computer to display it, so that is not necessarily very important.
> III) It would REALLY be nice of this was in a standardized place
> according to some standardized SSS (Schema Specified Somewhere).
There is support for things like this in the HTTP protocol, we use it,
but since it doesn't always work 100%, we also have the language
selection at the bottom of the pages as a fallback. Also remember that
we are trying to get this done as simple as possible so that there is
no need for special configuration in the web server (cookies or other
session data is *not* used).
--
\\//
Peter - http://www.softwolves.pp.se/
I do not read or respond to mail with HTML attachments.
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