Re: Accept-Language Support

gwm@austin.ibm.com writes:

> We have several questions concerning Accept-Language as described in
> rfc2068:
> 
> Are there any browsers which already send an Accept-Language header
> based on the user's language? 

The newer versions of netscape, explorer, alis tango
and possibly a number of others do this.

> Assuming that the browser does this, what should the server do 
> with this? 

Look at the best fit.

> Does there have to be a script on the server to find the HTML files
> in the right language? 

Not necessarily. Both Apache and CERN serves do this by configuration
data.

> Once the HTML file in the right language is found, can the URLs
> within that HTML file just point to other HTML files and have
> the correct language selected? That is, can we have URLs without
> language codes in them and have HTML files retrieved in the language
> required by the user?

The selection is normaly done on html file naming, not in the
files themselves. Typical names are index.html.en or index.en.html
I have not yet found a good and secure way to go forward once a language
has been seleceted (if selection is used), other than replicate
the files. But if you use automatic selection, you can stay
with the automatic selection of the pages.


> Has anyone implemented a dynamic multilingual web site which does not
> require the user to explicitly indicate the language as part of the URL?

I have done a few:

     www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg20 does english and french, without any
                                 selection.
     www.dkuug.dk/maits   does 10 languages without selection, but you
                          can select them too.

Keld

Received on Friday, 18 July 1997 05:57:23 UTC