Anil Gangolli wrote:
Namely, as long as we have only one representative country variant for a
given language, we should just put it at the top without a variant
listing so that the normal ResourceBundle algorithm finds it. I'll try
to fix this for 3.0.
Forcing specificity skirts any primacy argumants if we have more than
one; I'm not sure if we should do anything in such cases.
I suppose that could be a problem for China/Taiwan. Alternatively, we
could just decide on a which-country-has-the-most-Internet-users basis.
I don't know enough about the Chinese-language world to know if the
average person in Taiwan would be more comfortable in English or
"Chinese (China)".
Ease-of-use and national pride could be on opposing teams on this issue.
I vote for ease-of-use. I suggest that we choose the most widely used
variant and use it as the default for that language rather than English.
If users are offended by that they will enter bugs and then we could
change it to English, or Spanish, or whatever users from that locale
prefer. I think we're more likely to offend (or confuse) with English
than another variant of the same language.
(As a U.S. and Irish citizen...) If I selected "English (Ireland)", I'd
prefer getting "English (United Kingdom)" or any other English, to
getting Chinese or any other non-English language.
Are there any China (CN) , Hong Kong (HK), or Taiwan (TW) users out
there who have an opinion? Since we don't have a zh_HK variant would
Hong Kong citizens prefer zh_CN, zh_TW, or English as the language if
they choose "zh" as their Locale? Would most Taiwanese users prefer to
get zh_CN or English if they chose "zh"?
I'd guess that French Canadians or French-speaking Swiss would prefer
"French (France)" to English, and that Arabic speakers of any country
would prefer any Arabic to English. If we had "Spanish (Spain)" and
"Spanish (Mexico)" my guess is that Venezuelans would prefer "Spanish
(Spain)" to English if they chose "Spanish (Venezuela)" in their
preference settings. If they want English, they'd still be able to set it.
As a reductio-ad-absurdum on the "national pride trumps ease-of-use"
argument: the default should be "Esperanto" -- that way we'd show no
preference or primacy. Although we'd make sure that no one would be
offended, we'd make sure most everyone was inconvenienced or blocked
from using Roller altogether.
Another alternative would be to only list the variants that are actually
available. If "Spanish (Venezuela)" is not available it wouldn't be
listed. Venezuelans could then choose between "Spanish", "Spanish
(Spain)", "Spanish (Mexico)", "English", etc. rather than choose
"Spanish (Venezuela)" and get English.
I recall that I've previously suggested the "Default" Locale setting use
the browser's "Accept-language" header. That way, for example, Chinese
language users could configure their choices according to their true
preferences. If a _TW user preferred English to _CN they could get it.
SUN Employees: Does SUN have any user-interface guidelines on this subject?
I'm working with users in Japan and Mexico and both have required
special instructions due to the current implementation. My feedback
from Japan (on other apps) is that the "Accept Language" header method
of selecting is preferable to having to choose a language in a
preferences panel (that they would have to navigate to in English)
Disclaimer: I'm not a UI or localization expert -- I'm just using my
limited experience with international users and trying real hard to
think of what I would want if I were in the shoes of a user in each of
the various locales.
Regards,
Sean
