Re: Localized Pages

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

Joakim Ziegler wrote:

> > Even if the detected language setting should be presented as the 
> > top-most choice in a drop down box on an otherwise English-by-default 
> > page, I don't think this is the correct way. Most web developers know 
> > that if you can't attract the visitor that wants information fast, and 
> > convince him or her in so-and-so-many seconds that this is the page he 
> > should read, he/she won't stay.
>
> > This, I think, is also true for localization. If an international 
> > visitor, who is not fluent with English, that wants quick information 
> > about what GNOME is should be presented with an English default I don't 
> > think that he would spend that much time to even figure out if it can be 
> > set otherwise. It would just be "oh well, this is not the information 
> > taht I wanted". That's why I think the default is so important.
>
> > And then again, the language setting in your browser doesn't say "I want 
> > all content in English by default, whatever I set this setting to". Its 
> > message is "if I set this setting, this is the language that will be the 
> > default to me". So if I set it to "Dutch", it means that I really want 
> > pages to appear in Dutch. I think we should respect that.
>
> There's an additional problem with atuomatic detection, in addition to the
> ones people have already mentioned: Automatic detection is broken on certain
> combinations of browsers, proxies and so on. For instance, with my IE5
> installation, if I try to go to the Debian site and click on any of the
> documentation links that are supposed to use auto-detection, I get the
> document in Polish, despite the fact that my IE is set to English as the
> preferred language. It might be the proxy I use, but I doubt it. Now, if I
> get a site in Polish, I'm *very* lost, especially if autodetection is the
> sole/main way to detect languages.

That would be why I suggested some manual way to override the language 
detection (a drop-down box with languages). I think that assuming that 
language detection works for most setups is fair - I have never had 
problems with it, and I have used it a lot. So what I'm basically saying 
is that yes, it can go wrong, but I don't think we should "optimize" 
only for the situation when it goes wrong, and not optimize for the 
default that in most cases certainly would meet people's wanted result. 
I think the latter is more important.

Considering your example - do you have the same problem with 
www.google.com? It is also automatically translated (but I think it may 
use host redirection, I'm not sure).


> Hence, given the obvious problems with this, I think autodetection to display
> a clearly visible menu choice, and English as a default, combined with
> www.se.gnome.org, www.fr.gnome.org and so on set up as aliases that do the
> right thing, so that people who want to specifically refer to one language
> (such as a newspaper or magazine in that language) can do so easily, is the
> best way to do this, if we want to avoid potentially fatal problems.

The idea with local mirrors solves some of this, the problem is only 
that I don't think any user would expect there to be mirrors with those 
adresses. So either we re-direct users based on their host (which has 
even more drawbacks) or we inform them directly on the gnome.org front 
page about the local mirror (which then again would require that 
information to be translated).


Well, then again, setting local language as default on the local 
mirrors, and use your suggestion, may be the best way to solve this. But 
then the problem is that there will probably not be enough local mirrors...
Relying on mirrors and explicitly directing international visitors to 
these requires a lot of well maintained mirrors, with proper resources, 
bandwidth, people to maintain hardware, etc. Then we have expanded the 
problem with translation resources to the problem of setting up a lot of 
well maintained mirrors, something of which I'm not sure was a necessary 
step.
My idea with the mirrors was for them to be a compliment to gnome.org 
(easier to access than sending packages over the world over bad 
networks), and for very local content to be hosted (gnome events in a 
particular country). Not as a replacement for proper 
internationalization of www.gnome.org, which is the official site to 
most people.


Christian