Re: [PHP] Re: Newbie asks about multi-lingual website strategies
At 12:56 AM +0100 11/28/07, Jochem Maas wrote: Colin Guthrie wrote: tedd wrote: ... Sorry Tedd, but I'm not sure where the browser sniffing stuff came in. IE and FF both offer a UI to input the user's preferred language, it's an HTTP standard thing and nothign to do with user agents string parsing. It uses the Accept-Language header sent with http requests to detect the language. It's quite standard but problems usually crop up in e.g. Australia and the UK where a lot of people leave the default en-US language when en-GB or en-AU would be better. Again it's not infallible but it's a fairly good starting point. ditto. So, sniffing the browser to determine language isn't the same as browser sniffing -- OK. Sorry, my bad. Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: Newbie asks about multi-lingual website strategies
tedd wrote: At 12:56 AM +0100 11/28/07, Jochem Maas wrote: Colin Guthrie wrote: tedd wrote: ... Sorry Tedd, but I'm not sure where the browser sniffing stuff came in. IE and FF both offer a UI to input the user's preferred language, it's an HTTP standard thing and nothign to do with user agents string parsing. It uses the Accept-Language header sent with http requests to detect the language. It's quite standard but problems usually crop up in e.g. Australia and the UK where a lot of people leave the default en-US language when en-GB or en-AU would be better. Again it's not infallible but it's a fairly good starting point. ditto. So, sniffing the browser to determine language isn't the same as browser sniffing -- OK. there is no sniffing of the browser - merely a case of parsing the contents of the Accept-Language header if the browser sent it along with the request regardless of what browser is being used. there is no reason to assume that anyone would want to spoof the Accept-Language header to contain something that doesn't correspond with what the user wants ... why set japanese as a preferred language if you don't speak it? and if they do do that and end up getting a site in japanese then really that is the users problem not the site developers. it not the same as ouput different content/layout/etc based on the UserAgent string - which is known to be spoofed in order to combat idiot developers attempts to force people to use certain browser (for whatever reason) I mean, we don't assume that the requested URL is not what the user really wanted? e.g. user requests example.com/foo.php but we know that it's likely to be spoofed so we'll help out and server them example.com/bar.php ??? besides which I did state that using Accept-Language header to determine a [probable] suitable language should be done in addition to offering the user an explicit language selection mechanism. lastly I think using GEO-IP services to determine location and thereby an implied language is worthless in general - I can be sitting anywhere on the planet and still want to view content in Dutch, not to mention things like global corporate gateways, anonymous proxies, etc, etc. The exception to this could be when the website in question is specifically offering localised data (e.g. find me a restaurant/garage/whatever in Rotterdam) Sorry, my bad. no need for the sarcasm Tedd, seems we have differing opinions on this - although my gut feeling is that your hung up on something that's not strictly relevant in this situation. :-) -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: Newbie asks about multi-lingual website strategies
Jeff Benetti wrote: ... Am I correct that if two people are logged on using two different languages that the session var will keep track of the different users (by IP I assume) and the server won’t mess up? yes, the contents of $_SESSION are stored per user. this is tracked by way of a session cookie (which is just another cookie really) that PHP (under normal circumstances) automatically sends and parses (when you call session_start()). Anyway thanks everyone for all the great help, I’m on a nearly vertical learning curve here and it’s great to have this community to draw on. I’m pretty much working in a vacuum otherwise. any room for that wizard named Brad in your vacuum? -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: Newbie asks about multi-lingual website strategies
At 3:01 PM +0100 11/28/07, Jochem Maas wrote: tedd wrote: So, sniffing the browser to determine language isn't the same as browser sniffing -- OK. there is no sniffing of the browser - merely a case of parsing the contents of the Accept-Language header if the browser sent it along with the request regardless of what browser is being used. there is no reason to assume that anyone would want to spoof the Accept-Language header to contain something that doesn't correspond with what the user wants ... why set japanese as a preferred language if you don't speak it? and if they do do that and end up getting a site in japanese then really that is the users problem not the site developers. it not the same as ouput different content/layout/etc based on the UserAgent string - which is known to be spoofed in order to combat idiot developers attempts to force people to use certain browser (for whatever reason) I mean, we don't assume that the requested URL is not what the user really wanted? e.g. user requests example.com/foo.php but we know that it's likely to be spoofed so we'll help out and server them example.com/bar.php ??? besides which I did state that using Accept-Language header to determine a [probable] suitable language should be done in addition to offering the user an explicit language selection mechanism. lastly I think using GEO-IP services to determine location and thereby an implied language is worthless in general - I can be sitting anywhere on the planet and still want to view content in Dutch, not to mention things like global corporate gateways, anonymous proxies, etc, etc. The exception to this could be when the website in question is specifically offering localised data (e.g. find me a restaurant/garage/whatever in Rotterdam) Thanks for the explanation -- I didn't realize most of that. Sorry, my bad. no need for the sarcasm Tedd, seems we have differing opinions on this - although my gut feeling is that your hung up on something that's not strictly relevant in this situation. :-) Jochem: This just hasn't been my week -- everyone (long story) thinks I'm being sarcastic when I'm not. The Sorry, my bad means I apologize, my mistake. How can that be taken as sarcasm? As for being hung-up -- again, I'm clueless. I mistakenly thought that anything obtained from the browser was subject to suspicion as is any outside data. But apparently you can trust (I realize within certain limits) some things provided by the browser -- that's news to me. Boy, I got to work on my communication skills because everyone can't be wrong, right? Again, thanks for your explanation -- and that's not being sarcastic. I'm just trying to communicate without offending/annoying anyone. Maybe I should end every line with a smiley? :-) Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: Newbie asks about multi-lingual website strategies
Dear Tedd, Dear List, tedd wrote: As for being hung-up -- again, I'm clueless. I mistakenly thought that anything obtained from the browser was subject to suspicion as is any outside data. But apparently you can trust (I realize within certain limits) some things provided by the browser -- that's news to me. You are right. Being suspicious with data coming from the browser is a pretty good reflex. But, as long as you use the accept-language header only for detecting the user's native language, you do not risk a lot. In the worst case, your will set your site's language to something that is not the user's native language. In that case, you only need to allow him to change this setting manually. You can base yourself on information provided by the browser, but as you say, I believe that we should not rely completely on it. This is why allowing the user to change his language, in your case, becomes important. It's always a balance between risk and usability. Hope this helps, Jean-Michel -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: Newbie asks about multi-lingual website strategies
tedd wrote: At 3:01 PM +0100 11/28/07, Jochem Maas wrote: ... Jochem: This just hasn't been my week -- everyone (long story) thinks I'm being sarcastic when I'm not. ouch! The Sorry, my bad means I apologize, my mistake. How can that be taken as sarcasm? guess it's down to my input filters ;-) not to worry, no feelings were hurt in the process. As for being hung-up -- again, I'm clueless. I mistakenly thought that anything obtained from the browser was subject to suspicion as is any outside data. But apparently you can trust (I realize within certain limits) some things provided by the browser -- that's news to me. your right about the trust issue but I don't think trust is the point in this case. looking at what the browser offered as accepted languages is merely a way of trying to be helpful - you still have to parse the relevant header in a safe way. Boy, I got to work on my communication skills because everyone can't be wrong, right? let's be positive, next week it will be better! Again, thanks for your explanation -- and that's not being sarcastic. I'm just trying to communicate without offending/annoying anyone. Maybe I should end every line with a smiley? :-) dunno about that smiley, it might become annoying ;-) Cheers, tedd -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: Newbie asks about multi-lingual website strategies
Jean-Michel Philippon-Nadeau wrote: Dear Tedd, Dear List, tedd wrote: As for being hung-up -- again, I'm clueless. I mistakenly thought that anything obtained from the browser was subject to suspicion as is any outside data. But apparently you can trust (I realize within certain limits) some things provided by the browser -- that's news to me. You are right. Being suspicious with data coming from the browser is a pretty good reflex. But, as long as you use the accept-language header only for detecting the user's native language, you do not risk a lot. In the worst case, your will set your site's language to something that is not the user's native language. In that case, you only need to allow him to change this setting manually. You can base yourself on information provided by the browser, but as you say, I believe that we should not rely completely on it. This is why allowing the user to change his language, in your case, becomes important. yes! that's what I was trying to say :-) It's always a balance between risk and usability. Hope this helps, Jean-Michel -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] Re: Newbie asks about multi-lingual website strategies
My approach to multi lang abilities uses the following db structure base_name is the input field name and the basic raw label for the field lang_1 lang_2 ... lang_12 prompt_1 prompt_2 ... prompt_12 since i currently need to support 12 languages in the initial concept when the user signs on, i equate the language to an offset on the table to be able to pull the correct language out of the tables. I have the prompts in there to provide prompts for input fields as required. These values are then input thru a translation interface. Using the interface, i build up translatable values for the controls as well, where items like radio buttons and selects are done in the following manner base_name lang_1 lang_2 ... lang_n salutation Salutation Salut something base_name.db_value_1 = first option mr Mister Monsiour base_name.db_value_2 = second option mrs Mrs Madam ... base_name.db_value_n = n option Then for each option value i have a function that pulls the the correct values and builds the options list for each control type Our final step to improve perfomance (note that this is, sadly, ASP / vbscript ) was to take the translation table into an XML application level object to cache the data since its relatively immutable. Now when I write this same app in php, I am more likely to skip the caching portion of this in favor of templating the forms for each language. I would use a folder for each language. hth bastien To: php-general@lists.php.net From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:18:45 + Subject: [PHP] Re: Newbie asks about multi-lingual website strategies Jeff Benetti wrote: I'm a noob so keep the comments to a noob's level please.I am doing a website and my client wants the bulk of the text to be bilingual (French and English). The last site I did used php and mysql so I am getting comfortable with that technology. Typically I am using a single php file and my menu constantly points to the same file with different id options example index.php?id=30 and I want to use the same idea to choose a language example index.php?lang=frid=30. Pretty straight forward for many of you folks but before I start reinventing the wheel I wondered if anyone could offer any suggestions. I have a couple of approaches in mind.1: Session vars, I have never used this but it seems straight forward. Drawbacks? 2: Cookies again not too big a deal, never used cookies either but it doesn't seem to be mystifying however the fact that the user can turn cookies off makes me not want to go this route. 3: Use the mysql database and log each ip address and record the preference and maybe the last time on the site. I am leaning in this direction because I think it is the most robust but will it be slow? First I have to get the ip then I have to check to see if it is in my data base and then get the language preference. It would be great to have a standardized function that I could use on all of my sites. I live in a bilingual country (Canada) so this could be a real selling point for my services.Any any and all comments are welcome, it will be a learning curve no matter which route I take so a little advice on the best direction pros cons would be great. And of course knowing that I will have many many thousands of people on my site (hee hee) which option will perform best once I start accumulating vistors. That's one problem I see with the mysql solution, I think it may start to be slow unless I start purging vistors who have not shown up in a while or limit the number of entries. First of all you can use the browser supplied language preferences (if available) to try and guess the users preferred language. It should be obvious from phpinfo() and a half decent browser what vars you need to inspect ($_SERVER['HTTP_LANG'] or something like that - can't remember of hand!). You could do soemthing like: 1. Check session for lang preference and use it. 2. Regardless of the result of 1, check GET for a preference and store in session if present and use it. 3. If neither 1 nor 2 has any preference, use the browser supplied preference. 4. If nothing else, use a hard coded default.OK, that selection taken care of :) For hard coded strings in your PHP code use Gettext and bind to standard your catalog files and use the language choice from the above algorithm. xgettext can extract strings from PHP files easily enough. You just have to make sure you write
Re: [PHP] Re: Newbie asks about multi-lingual website strategies
Colin Guthrie wrote: tedd wrote: ... Sorry Tedd, but I'm not sure where the browser sniffing stuff came in. IE and FF both offer a UI to input the user's preferred language, it's an HTTP standard thing and nothign to do with user agents string parsing. It uses the Accept-Language header sent with http requests to detect the language. It's quite standard but problems usually crop up in e.g. Australia and the UK where a lot of people leave the default en-US language when en-GB or en-AU would be better. Again it's not infallible but it's a fairly good starting point. ditto. with regard to 'en-GB' and the like - that's easy enough to match. (the snippet I offered gave one one to do this) secondly I don't consider it my problem if the user has there preferred language set to swahili when they don't even speak that language (besides which my site probably won't be offering swahili anyway). Another approach would be to use a geoip database and try and look up the users IP address but, if anything, I'd say that is even less accurate than the above. Col -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
