Re: No Flags "Policy"

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <uraeus gnome org>]

On Sat, 2003-11-22 at 13:38, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller">
> 
> > > How about "if there is a great reason for including flags at a later
> > > date, we'll have to review it". But for now, let's avoid it.
> > 
> > How about just adding a entry to the HIG saying that we don't recommend
> > using flags as language identifiers since it is probably not the best tool
> > for the job.
> 
> That would definitely be sensible, and it should be done, but it does not
> cover the extent of the problem at hand.

It covers everything we need to cover. The political issues are just you
making a mountain out of an anthill. Sun just sold a huge pile of GNOME
desktops to China so it is clear that the fact that some of the official
GNOME tarballs contains a tawainese flag is not something which hinders
GNOME adoption in China. I would also like to point out that Chinese
provinces do have their own flags (see sodipodi.net for flags of Hong
Kong and Macau), so just including the flag of Tawain doesn't mean that
GNOME acknowledges its status as an independent nation. 

Also if the official line is that GNOME will not include flags because
we are afraid it will hinder GNOME adoption in mainland China then that
means that GNOME officially acknowledges that we support the mainland
China's claims in regards to Taiwan and Tibet which will be very
offensive to people living in those two areas.

So please lets keep this technical and not try to play at politics. If
there are good technical (including good UI design) reasons something
shouldn't use flags as symbolism we replace it with something better (as
soon as someone propose something that is actually better). And in cases
where flags a good alternative or the best of several bad ones we use
flags. 

The fact that MS, Apple and other do include flags do hint about that
even if flags have several weaknesses they do serve as the most
recognizable graphics in many cases.

Christian