On 11/01/2013 01:09 PM, Sergiu Dumitriu wrote: > On 11/01/2013 10:10 AM, Denis Gervalle wrote: >> I agree with all the articles Sergiu raised about the fact that flags does >> not fit perfectly with languages. In particular since I live in two >> countries that suffer of the misunderstanding. It is not rare that large >> international sites think that Belgium speaks only dutch, or Luxembourg >> speaks only german, while in fact both countries speaks three different >> languages. >> >> On the other hand, I have the feeling there is common usage on the web that >> have created, at least for users, the habit to see graphical representation >> in the form of flags, that somehow relate with languages. > > Indeed, many sites do this, contrary to best practices. But I haven't > seen in a long time a *major* site that does it, and let's not do things > just because other do them as well. > >> The main problems stated by the article from Sergiu, are: >> 1) same language in multiple countries >> 2) different languages in the same country >> >> The importance of these problems depends on the choice of languages you >> propose and the way you localize the site as well. >> >> For example, if you have a simple european site with english, french and >> german localization, using the Union Jack flag for english, the French >> Tricolour for french, and the flag of Germany for german, would probably no >> be a problem at all and even appreciated by users to quickly get it. > > Yes, that is indeed true. Flags work even better in one of the more > common use cases for XWiki, a collaborative intranet for a company with > offices in a few countries, to indicate not as much a language, but a > country. > >> If you have a large international site, and you localize your information >> by region, having different translations for en-uk, en-us, en-au and >> more... using flags will also works quite well. > > So and so. It works for differentiating between different country-wise > versions of a language, but if you go even larger, what about: > > - nl_BE versus fr_BE versus en_BE > - different dialects of the same language in a large country? Sicilian > versus standard Italian? Even deeper: Western Sicilian versus Ennese > versus Pantesco versus... > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_language#Dialects_of_Sicilian > >> You may even for a site using a single english localisation, either use a >> mix of the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes, or different localisation >> choice for each country all pointing to the same results. And for countries >> with different languages, you may use the same flag, translating the >> country name next to it into the appropriate language. >> >> So representing language by an icon is not a simple +1 ou -1 choice, it >> depends on situation, and IMO, we should propose it, and improve over time >> the flexibility to support the different situations properly. > > Agreed. So, to be clear, I'm not saying -1 for ever using a flag symbol > in XWiki, just to the original issue that prompted the discussion, > faceted search based on language. > >> Now about the flags we may use, you may want to also have a look at the >> flags I have created, actually mainly for european countries >> (bg, cz, de, en, et, fr, hu, lt, mt, pl, ro, sl, us, >> cn, da, el, es, fi, ga, it, lv, nl, pt, sk, sv), that you may found in the >> bluebird skin folder on incubator. Here are some samples: >> http://incubator.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/skin/skins/bluebird/languages/en.png >> http://incubator.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/skin/skins/bluebird/languages/fr.png >> http://incubator.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/skin/skins/bluebird/languages/ro.png >> http://incubator.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/skin/skins/bluebird/languages/usuk.png >> >> These are all self-made, so clearly free to use for us, and I may as well >> produce more of them if ever needed, and at larger size also. Using >> circular form has the advantage to look less like pure flags, and also to >> allow less gaps between them, while having larger icons. BTW, the bluebirds >> skin provides choice of languages using these flags when in a multi-lingual >> wiki, you may test that on myxwiki.org. >> >> I am +1 to use some flags (I have a conflict of interest to choose which >> ones ;) ), provided we allow customization and these are not required. >> >> Thanks (and sorry for this finally quite long mail) >> > > While both famfamfam and your icons do look nice, I have to say that I'm > not 100% confident in any of them. One thing that is too often ignored > is that flag colors are very well defined and should be represented > precisely. The French flag isn't just any blue, any white, any red. And > while I can see that the underlying color is indeed the right one, the > 3D effects added on top of them change the colors significantly. So I'd > rather have a less shiny version of flags that have more of the original > colors in them. > > Plus, this also goes in the "flat" direction that interface design is > into right now. > > famfamfam isn't that polished and consistent, it looks very amateurish. > I've looked at the ad, md, ro and td flags (all of which are > blue-yellow-red), and they have different border shadings (the ro one is > missing shading on the red color completely, unlike the others, and some > look more 3D than others), the aspect of the colors are wrong (they > should be different, but not as they are now, whith md blue=ro blue, and > ad blue so much lighter it looks like sky blue), they don't respect the > required proportions (ad should have a wider yellow strip)... > > Another concern is that these icons are very small raster images, so > they can't be nicely scaled to fit larger UIs. > > I don't have a good solution for the moment. > > http://flags.blogpotato.de/ looks a bit better than famfamfam (it has > more flags, larger icons, marker and round flags, look a bit more > polished, but still not perfect). > > Another option would be to spend time into designing scalable SVG > images, and offer them as another free alternative (as good citizens of > the internet), but that's not something that is our responsibility.
Actually most flags already have a SVG version on WikiPedia, uncopyrighted, so we could use them. > Something that works for simpler flags is to design them as CSS icons, > which doesn't require any image at all. This can be done ad-hoc as > needed for each flag, and doesn't require any external resource. > > > So, since we don't have a perfect solution, and the need for flag icons > has been postponed, I'd rather not hurry and add something we might > regret later. Let's not forget that this is a kind of an API once we add > them, and would require respecting the backwards compatibility policy to > remove or replace them. > -- Sergiu Dumitriu http://purl.org/net/sergiu _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
