Re: debian.org Language Subdomain Proposal
On Mon, Jul 29, 2019 at 9:44 PM Carsten Schoenert wrote:
> Am 29.07.19 um 10:49 schrieb Bagas Sanjaya:
> >
> > I'm proposing to use language subdomains for debian.org (d.o) site.
> does this solve any actual problem?
There is a problem with Debian's use of content negotiation for
support of multiple languages:
The browser UI for choosing which language a website uses is overly
complicated, hidden away in the preferences, isn't per-site
configurable and for some people preferences are read-only. So
basically language content negotiation may as well not exist, most
folks will be stuck with what their browser reports.
Thus there is no reliable way to give every visitor to your website
the ability to choose their preferred language.
Consequently almost the entire web abandoned using content negotiation
for language selection and switched to menus on each website that use
a different mechanism to select the language. Some use a cookie, some
use top-level directories (example.com/en-us/...), some use
subdomains, some use autodetection based on GeoIP, or a combination of
factors.
People have gotten used to selecting their language on the website
they are using. When visiting the Debian website, they often complain
that when they choose their preferred language via the Debian language
footer, they get the right language in their first click, but
subsequent clicks to other pages revert back to the language their
browser set.
Passing cookies for this could work easily, but discussing it a while
ago we decided there could be GDPR issues. I seem to remember I worked
out that via some Apache rewrite rules it would be possible to use the
names of top-level directories to influence content negotiation, but I
neglected to take notes about how. Using a subdomain could work in a
similar way but I think it is more work because it means new languages
mean new subdomains, which means DSA have to make changes.
PS: related bug where Firefox folks refused to add a more
user-friendly per-site configuration for this, because the site
identity panel is reserved for security/privacy related matters:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1545392
--
bye,
pabs
https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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