Re: New FAQ: Global Gateway

At 23:36 03/11/18 -0500, Tex Texin wrote:

>In a way the problem is made worse by our providing a list of languages that
>the user must select from.
>
>It would be much easier if the user simply typed the language name (in 
>unicode)
>since we can easily match that or provide something close to any candidate
>names they might type.

Matching could be done, but would require quite some experience
with what people might type.


>That changes the problem to one of how do you ask the question "what is your
>language? Please type it here".
>
>For this we need an international standard, either a graphic image of someone
>speaking, or the modern equivalent of
>asking someone in radio communications "What's your 10-20?" (Where are you
>located?).
>
>The number scheme works around the world....10-4, 10-20, etc.

It doesn't. I have no clue what these mean, for example.
And getting such things established is very difficult and would
require a lot of work.


>It might do to show lots of language names and a graphic and a field where
>people can type in their language...
>Maybe have some auto complete to reduce the typing.

The chance is that people look at it and say 'my language isn't here'
and give up.


>We make everything mousable and sometimes it ends up being harder than if the
>user were to just type in the info.
>For example selecting state in the USA from a list of 50 just to get a 2 
>letter
>code (which is redundant with the postal code anway!!!)

In that case, the user knows the code, it's a short code, and
the user knows that his/her code will be okay. For languages,
the chance is that there would be a lot of sites where people
would try a language, and find out that their language isn't
supported. That would then quickly discourage them from trying.
So a list or a popup provides very important additional information:
what languages are actually available.


Regards,    Martin.

Received on Wednesday, 19 November 2003 00:09:18 UTC