Tobias Toedter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> tapota : > Hi, > > while working through the translation to German, I noticed that Savane lacks > a > method of setting the desired language other than through the Browser's > accept-language feature. > > Since there are quite a few browsers around which doesn't support the > language > setting (and there are cartainly a lot of users who don't know about this > feature), I was thinking about adding a list of supported languages to the > website. > > This list should look similar to e.g. Debian's, and every language on the > list > should be a link to the website in this language. This list could be > displayed on top of every page, from left to right. > > I don't know how hard that would be to implement, and I guess the code would > have to be changed to hold some kind of $language variable, which can be set > through the described language links. > > Probably the right place for this would be frontend/php/include/i18n.php. > > Comments?
I'm not sure it is a so good feature. I think preferable to keep with the default method, even if some browser still do not understand it (they likely do not understand most of the web standards) considering the load of extra info on page already big. It looks to me like extra work with little benefit, because people carring about i18n usually use better browsers (my guess is that authors of browser that do not support that do not care about it), and will not necessarily enjoy the extra amount of useless information in the page. ([Mozilla] [Netscape 4.x] [Internet Explorer] [Opera] [Galeon] [Konqueror] [lynx] [W3] [iCab] [W3M] [Netscape 3.x] [Mozilla Firebird] [Safari] [ELinks], all support the language setting) Adding a link to a page like http://www.debian.org/intro/cn looks better to me. The other issue I see is the fact that translation could often be partial, as it is program i18n, not really page translation. And people will often get a page with a part in english, especially because no one ever though about the way more complex trouble of i18n of database content. And people could get confused by selecting german and getting a page 99% in English. I think that Savane is more a program than a website. I would prefer sticking to program habbits: I never seen a gettextized program with a "this page is also available in this language", not in konqueror, emacs, coreutils (ls, cat...), the Gimp), and if is exists, I would rather see that as a bug than a feature. Configuring hundred time this kind of information that should be set up from the start looks more workaround to fix a problem that should not exists in the first place than anything else. One solution, however, could be to add this in the "my account configuration" page. We could consider that as configuration item, stored in a cookie (like themes) or in the database, that would override the configuration from the browser. However, I'm still not convinced it is a good thing. People should not be misleaded by setting configuration option at the wrong place. If they want Savane in French, they likely want every sites in French, and the way to get that is to configure their browser, not Savane. My opinion is we should not provide workarounds for misconfiguration but pointer to helo configuring software. In the long run, it will ease maintenance of the code, it will help to keep an interface that does not require a PhD to do very little things, it will help users to master their tools like their browser. No? -- Mathieu Roy +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | General Homepage: http://yeupou.coleumes.org/ | | Computing Homepage: http://alberich.coleumes.org/ | | Not a native english speaker: | | http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
