Re: Translations

> > > > 5) The Accept-Language should be a ordered "preference list".  There is no 
> > > > need to quantify the preference of the user.
> > 
> > I accept that the q is for creating the "preference list" as long as 
> > there is a "non quantifing mode"; i.e.,
> > 
> >  Spanish 0.9
> >  English 0.8
> >  French  0.7
> > 
> > means that I prefererence list is Spanish, English, French without 
> > quantification.
> 
> I don't understand this "without quantification".

The user should be able to say my "language preference list" is
 Spanish, English, French

without giving more information and the server should sent them in this 
order.

> Do you think
> you need this because you know that you read Spanish better than
> English, and so on, but you don't know how much better?

Not know or do not want to say.

> Or do
> you think it is needed to avoid click-tracing?

It also do this.

> What would you expect the server to do when receiving a "preference
> list without quantification"?

Just to look to see which document is available in this order.

> It has to use *some* q values anyway, doesn't it?

Some value that has this effect as the q value is a parameter for some 
calculations.  I always want the Spanish first, even if the English is of 
much better quality.

> 
>  
> > > The problem with q on Accept-Language is privacy. One part of this
> > > problem is the identification with some language minority, which
> > > may be done independently of q factors. The other is click tracing.
> > > For this, in certain cases even just the set of languages provides
> > > enough information. To alleviate the problem of click-tracing and
> > > privacy, in addition to the provisions in the http specs, it might
> > > be a good idea to agree to restrict the q values set by browsers
> > > to a limited set (e.g. 1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4, 0.2, 0.0). This will
> > > allow a wide expression of relative preferences, while it will
> > > avoid click-tracing on something like "the guy that has Japanese
> > > at 0.4586794".
> > 
> > There should be at least to modes of transmiting the languages preference 
> > list:
> > 
> >  - Get the best doc.    (list communicated)
> >  - Get the default doc. (list not communicated)
> > 
> > A further refinement could be to request the best doc only from friendly 
> > servers.
> 
> The second mode (get the default doc when not sending any Accept-Language
> data) already exists.

Yes, but even if the client does not transmit Accept-Language, the server
should respond with the list of available linguistic versions.  As the  
Content-Language is for the languages in the transmited doc, this must be 
in another header, such as Alternate.

> The first mode also exists; it sends the overall
> best document considering your language preferences and the quality of
> the documents.

As commented above, this must be also possible independant of the quality 
of the docs.

> I don't know what you mean by "best doc only from friendly servers",

servers to which the language preference is transmitted first.  Mechanism 
to be defined: a simple list maintained by the user in his client or 
probably something more elaborated.

> why that would be needed.

Privacy purpose: I trust the friendly severs. 

Regards
Tomas

Received on Saturday, 18 January 1997 15:29:28 UTC