RE: Interesting use of flags to indicate languages

+1 to all Tex's comments.  Not as useful as it seemed at first sight.  But
thanks for raising the question, Martin.  Was interesting to look at it.

More below...

RI


============
Richard Ishida
W3C

contact info:
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ 

W3C Internationalization:
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Publication blog:
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-i18n-geo-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-i18n-geo-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Tex Texin
> Sent: 01 November 2004 07:58
> To: Martin Duerst
> Cc: public-i18n-geo@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Interesting use of flags to indicate languages
> 
> 
> It is an ok solution if you believe users don't mind waiting 
> to see if their flag comes up...

Absolutely. 

> 
> It still has the problem that some countries are multilingual 
> so their flags would appear under multiple languages.
> And unless the flags of a multilingual country are 
> synchronized to appear at the same time, a user has to watch 
> multiple lines to see if his preferred language appears in 
> the right slot, and if not, then look at the line for the 
> secondary choice, etc.


Also, if there were selections for Italian, French and German, a user from a
multilingual country, like Switzerland wouldn't actually be able to tell
which was which without waiting for another recognizable flag to come
around.

> 
> This particular site doesnt have many languages so it might 
> be ok, although they are still missing for example, all of 
> the flags for countries that use english... Whereas simply 
> stating "english" would have been recognized by all of them...

This is the most problematic point in my mind. It goes back to the point
that flags  don't represent languages, but rather countries. Language text
represents language.

Someone once said to me that flags can be used if you are referring to a
specific combination of country plus language, eg. the Union Jack for en-GB,
the Austrian flag for de-AT.  This obviously fails when you just want to say
English or German, but also comes a cropper for a country like Switzerland,
where there is usually one Swiss flag for de-CH, fr-CH and it-CH.


> 
> tex
> 
> Martin Duerst wrote:
> > 
> > I just saw this; not sure this is a good idea or not, but 
> it certainly 
> > tries to address one concern often mentioned with using flags to 
> > indicate languages:
> > 
> > http://www.absint.com/aisee/index_ru.htm
> > 
> > uses animated GIFs to cycle though different flags for the 
> language it 
> > wants to indicate.
> > 
> > Regards,    Martin.
> 
>

Received on Monday, 1 November 2004 17:28:52 UTC