Re: NEW ISSUE: Use of "Client" in 14.4

Travis Snoozy (Volt) wrote:
> 
>    As intelligibility is highly dependent on the individual user, it is
>    recommended that <del>client applications</del><ins>user agents</ins>
>    make the choice of linguistic preference available to the user. If the
>    choice is not made available, then the Accept-Language header field MUST
>    NOT be given in the request.

Thank you for the clarification.  I have a better rational for your change;
"user agents" appears repeatedly in the specification; "client applications"
occurs only in this specific paragraph.  The other rational alternative is
to drop the word client.

Remember that an application/user agent may not even be interactive, and may
be an application with a preferences.conf file which can be configured
appropriately.

>> But if the proxy can discern a locale by, say, the regional IP assignment
>> of the end client, then that would be it's choice to 'fill in the gap'
>> here. Or a special purpose proxy could very well prefer a specific
>> language family based on it's anticipated user base.
> 
> None of these make the "linguistic preference available to the user". They
> make a choice, but the user is cut out of the loop (what if I use TOR, and
> get a German IP? Should the proxy rewrite my Accept-Language to be German,
> even though I want English?). Thus, none of the options you suggest conform
> to the spec.
> 
>> I'd suggest we please leave the existing text alone and leave it to the
>> implementor to determine if and how Accept-Language should be presented.
> 
> ... It's totally up to the implementer how to present Accept-Language options 
> right now, and in my modification; I agree with you that this should be a choice
> on the implementer's part. But implementers of clients (proxies, user agents,
> or otherwise) do have to be present a linguistic preference choice -somehow-
> (according to the spec, right now) in order to transmit an Accept-Language
> header. This is the case even for things (like proxies) that don't have a
> reasonable way to present a choice to the user.

You presume.  Let's say that in your example above that as TOR's outbound proxy,
an assortment of proxy services are offered, e.g.

http://fr.tor.example.com
http://dk.tor.example.com
http://en.tor.example.com

I can make the rational argument that these three are user agents acting on
behalf of the endpoint user agent, even with the language change you propose.

> (I think I might be being unclear somehow; please, ask questions and 
> I'll try to explain myself better.)

Of course.

Received on Friday, 5 January 2007 00:02:32 UTC