Re: dynamic language switching

On Nov 25,  8:04pm, Erik van der Poel wrote:

> At the Sevilla conference last week, a few mentioned the need to be able
> to dynamically switch the language of the client's menus and so on. I'd
> like to hear a few examples of situations where this is really needed
> (as opposed to just being "nice").

The example that was mentioned at the time was large corporates who
just have to order 10,000 browsers rather than 2,168 English ones,
2,345 French ones .... and have to deal with all those browsers being
slightly different code bases, the English versions are at 3.1.2 but
the German one is 3.0.8 which had the unfortunate bug, fixed in 3.0.9
and the Arabic ones are still at  2.9.7

In other words, it is a substantial administrative headache solved and
large corporates like that sort of thing. You know, the ones that are
still using Win 3.11 because until *all* the PCs can be upgraded to
Win95 they would rather wait. I need hardly add that these are the
customers who actually pay for browsers, in quantity, rather than just
downloading them for free.

The other example mentioned at the time was switching the user interface
language for client demonstrations.

A further example, not mentioned at the time, is the public access
terminal or kiosk - internet cafes, tourist information services,
library terminals, hotel room terminals. Any situation in fact where
the machine and the browser stays put and there are multiple users.

In other words, its a strong USP in an international market and generates
sales revenue.


-- 
Chris Lilley, W3C                          [ http://www.w3.org/ ]
Graphics and Fonts Guy            The World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/people/chris/              INRIA,  Projet W3C
chris@w3.org                       2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
+33 (0)4 93 65 79 87       06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Tuesday, 26 November 1996 09:46:53 UTC