Re: Localized Pages

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

Sai Kiran wrote:

> 	I was thinking about a very cute way to link the main gnome.org
> page to local gnome sites. How about having a very small text-based GIF

I really don't like the idea of patent-infested GIF pictures on a free 
software site... I'll assume you mean "a small PNG" or another free 
format from now on ;-)


> with a message like "Welcome to GNOME" or something ? The GIF would be a
> small animation displaying the message in different languages. If you
> click on the image when the message is in, say Spanish, it would take you
> to the Spanish GNOME site. This I think can be implemented along with
> textual links to the different pages so that people who have disabled
> animations in their browsers can also navigate. 
>
> 	I think it would be cute. Do you people have something to say ?

How does this fit with the idea of the pages already being localized 
when the visitor gets to see them the first time?
I was thinking that the solution being discussed was one based on the 
user's language preferences in the browser, i.e. when the user goes to 
www.gnome.org his language preferences are detected in his browser by 
the site, and the pages automatically served in his preferred language. 
Sort of like how http://www.debian.org works now (try set a different 
language setting in your browser and go to the debian pages).

When all content is already localized, it might be hard to spot a 
picture that is also localized and says "welcome to GNOME"... Maybe it 
should be more specific, and say "welcome to GNOME in <language>" or 
some such and then take you to that languages GNOME pages (as discussed 
earlier probably in a sub-directory on a local GNOME mirror)?

Maybe it should be two links -- language-specific content doesn't have 
to be country-specific content. For example, if you're Austrian, you 
might be interested in the "GNOME in German" pages, but you might also 
just be interested in the Austrian GNOME events.
So my proposal would be two links instead of just one, like this (with 
Swedish as an example):

Link text (but translated):

"Welcome to GNOME in Swedish"	->	http://www.se.gnome.org/sv/
	Instructions for setting up Swedish as the language in
	GNOME, the homepage of the Swedish GNOME translation
	team etc; all language-specific content.

"Welcome to GNOME in Sweden"	->	http://www.se.gnome.org/se/
	Local GNOME events in Sweden, links to LUGs, Swedish
	mirrors for downloading, etc.

Or maybe the "Welcome to" part should just be skipped...
What do you think?



Christian