Re: No Flags "Policy"

[Jens Bech Madsen <jbm oncable dk>]

On Sat, 2003-11-22 at 14:12, Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote:
> 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

Very well put. I agree with that totally.

Cheers,
Jens