Re: when to use language negotiation- author needed

Just spotted this mail from John Yunker.  It failed to reach the list
because John used a yahoo address rather than his bytelevel company
address.
RI

From: John Yunker [mailto:yunkerjohn@yahoo.com] 
Sent: 19 December 2003 13:36
To: Tex Texin; GEO; Yves Savourel; Frangois Yergeau

Sorry, I missed this email. Here are my two cents if
it's not too late...


> 
> For example, there were suggestions that this
> approach only made sense
> where every page had an exact counterpart in another
> language or region.
I think negotiation can and probably should be used
for even a few languages. I look at it as just another navigation layer;
but I would emphasize that negotiation should not take the place of a
language or country "gateway." For instance, even if negotiation works
correctly, the user may be using a borrowed computer and want to opt out
of a language; therefore, a gateway must always be present.

> 
> It might be the case that Language negotiation only
> makes sense for the
> entry page and after that page is read and a
> language either defaulted
> or selected by the user, the rest of the content
> would be linked
> directly, without relying on language negotiation.
I agree that it should first be used on the home or
landing page. When you get deeper into the site, there
is the issue of people arriving directly to these
pages by means of search engines. In this case it's a
tougher call. A company may wish to use it here as
well along with a redirect back to the initial landing
page, that is, if the person's preferred language does
not match the destination language of the subpage. But
this is a hot issue as I know many bilinguals who hate redirection due
to language negotiation. And there may be overhead issues as well.

> Some thought organization by language directory
> (e.g.
> yadda/en/pages.html) might be more practical than by
> filename (e.g.
> yadda/pages.en.html)
I agree. Is it possible to tweak the htaccess file to
point to a language directory instead of a specific
page?

> There were questions about server load and
> scalability.
I've heard this concern from a number of techs, yet  I
find it odd that Google somehow pulls it without any
appairent problems. 

JY

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Received on Monday, 22 December 2003 13:33:46 UTC