RE: [WSG] mutli language websites
Hello Sam, Here are some thoughts I have on the topic... Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of sam sherlock Sent: 16 May 2005 23:34 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] mutli language websites Hello WSG List Members, I am delveloping a website that can switch between english and itallian. I am wondering if I should be using en-GB or en-gb for my lang attributes By convention language (en) is lower case, and country (GB) is upper - but it's only a convention, and actually the values are not case-sensitive. For more information see http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/ and also for the meta http-equiv=Content-Language content=en-GB / I don't know of any user agents that use the language declarations in the meta statement. I suggest you use attributes on the html element for declaring the text-processing language of a page, and consider using the HTTP header for indicating primary language metadata. For more details, see http://www.w3.org/TR/i18n-html-tech-lang/ are these attributes sensitive to casing? or should I just have en also is the charset iso-8859-1 OK for italian content? As some others have suggested, why not use utf-8. It may solve problems at a later date. I would also appreciate any links to web standard sites using multiple languages? See examples of how we do it at http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset and http://www.w3.org/International/articles/serving-xhtml/ Note that we are dealing with the odd page here and there that has a translated version. For this we use content negotiation to try to serve the person with the right page based on their browser's accept language information, but we also include links on each page. This is useful for: - people who ended up on this page because they used someone else's computer - people who are curious and need to get back to a language they recognise - people who's browser settings indicate, say, Hungarian (for which there is no translation), but would prefer to read a German version rather than English in this case (when there are both possibilities). See also Francois Yergeau's article at http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-when-lang-neg hope that helps some RI thanks in advance, Sam ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] mutli language websites
sam sherlock wrote: Hello WSG List Members, I am delveloping a website that can switch between english and itallian. I am wondering if I should be using en-GB or en-gb for my lang attributes and also for the meta http-equiv=Content-Language content=en-GB / are these attributes sensitive to casing? or should I just have en also is the charset iso-8859-1 OK for italian content? I would also appreciate any links to web standard sites using multiple languages? thanks in advance, Sam Does anyone use transparent content negotiation to handle multiple language sites? I get the feeling this is hardly ever used, if so, why not? Regards Geoff Deering ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] mutli language websites
Geoff Deering wrote: Does anyone use transparent content negotiation to handle multiple language sites? I get the feeling this is hardly ever used, if so, why not? The problem IME is that when you use it you have to also provide a way for the user to pick her language which will override the negotiation (I've been accessing the Web a lot from computers localized in Japanese recently, and they're probably not sending Accept-Language headers that reflect the reality of languages I can really accept :). It's not complicated to mix both together but the extra feature of negotiating the default language rarely seems worth it. -- Robin Berjon ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] mutli language websites
Robin Berjon wrote: Geoff Deering wrote: Does anyone use transparent content negotiation to handle multiple language sites? I get the feeling this is hardly ever used, if so, why not? The problem IME is that when you use it you have to also provide a way for the user to pick her language which will override the negotiation (I've been accessing the Web a lot from computers localized in Japanese recently, and they're probably not sending Accept-Language headers that reflect the reality of languages I can really "accept" :). It's not complicated to mix both together but the extra feature of negotiating the default language rarely seems worth it. I am using ip2couuntry class in PHP to decide the default lanuage. Thanks to Evandro who sent me a link to his site in Portugese and English. The site in question does not use the language attribute as inteneded (as far as I understand) all Lan attributes are set to en for Portugese, Itallian and English. What is the web standards best practise for multi-lingual sites Should I use en or en-GB is the casing important? What charset should I use for the Itallian version the same as english or other? Are the any link available to webstandard best practise examples? many thanks SS
Re: [WSG] mutli language websites
Robin Berjon wrote: The problem IME is that when you use it you have to also provide a way for the user to pick her language which will override the negotiation (I've been accessing the Web a lot from computers localized in Japanese recently, and they're probably not sending Accept-Language headers that reflect the reality of languages I can really accept :). It's not complicated to mix both together but the extra feature of negotiating the default language rarely seems worth it. Yes, these are some of the problems I would have expected using this approach. Let alone if you are in some other country, in a net cafe and it is defaulting to another language, as what often happens with Google, which can be annoying for the user. Regards Geoff D ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] mutli language websites
sam sherlock wrote: I am using ip2couuntry class in PHP to decide the default lanuage. Thanks to Evandro who sent me a link to his site in Portugese and English. The site in question does not use the language attribute as inteneded (as far as I understand) all Lan attributes are set to en for Portugese, Itallian and English. What is the web standards best practise for multi-lingual sites 1. Should I use en or en-GB is the casing important? 2. What charset should I use for the Itallian version the same as english or other? 3. Are the any link available to webstandard best practise examples? Maybe you will find some of the info you are looking for here http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/resources/ G ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] mutli language websites
sam sherlock wrote: I would also appreciate any links to web standard sites using multiple languages? Still doing some under-the-hood work on this one to bring it up to speed, but you can check out http://www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au/ to see the site I was pestering the list about a month or so back (thread starts here: http://www.mail-archive.com/wsg@webstandardsgroup.org/msg16198.html) Not all pages have multiple languages, but some have translations of the English in both Traditional and Simplified Chinese. Preferred language can be selected in the RH column. I used UTF-8 Cheers Lachlan ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] mutli language websites
sam sherlock wrote: I am using ip2couuntry class in PHP to decide the default lanuage. I don't know if this is the greatest feature - definitely not in Canada where I live. Since the country has two official languages [english and french], it would still requires an "evil", but necessary splash page to select your language (unless you want them to search for the language toogle link). All gouvernment websites that I know of have a language page as a well as a method to toggle between both languages. Should I use en or en-GB is the casing important? "EN" should be just fine and according to my notes it is *not* case-sensitive. What charset should I use for the Itallian version the same as english or other? Why not use UTF-8 which supports nearly all languages [if not all] I can think of. For example, ColdFuion uses UTF-8 as the default charset for HTML as well as source code unless otherwise set. Best, .Peter -- Peter J. Farrell :: Maestro Publishing blog :: http://blog.maestropublishing.com email :: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Create boilerplate beans! Check out the Mach-II Bean Creator - free download. http://blog.maestropublishing.com/mach-ii_beaner.htm If you only knew the power of the Dark Side --
