Re: Accept-Language and q values

Yes, Erik describes the IE behavior correctly but I too, wonder about the
usefulness or even danger of including the q values in the accept-language
string.
IE4 and above does include the q value to be http compliant but also orders
the language codes according to user preference, highest priority first. The
ordering is not required by http.

I suspect that most, if not all, server side software would behave like Olin
says and assume language codes to be in priority order. If that were true,
we could just drop the qs, for the sake of reducing web clutter. Server-side
computing of the priorities based on q values for each request is much more
expensive than ordering by priority on the client side, required only when
user changes the settings, which occurs rarely or never.

As far as I have come across Microsoft's own sites, they look at the first
two values only, which are free of qs, in the IE case.

FYI a simple .ASP to read the accept-language setting:

<html>
<body>
Your Accept-Language setting: <%=
Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE") %>.<br>
</body>
</html>

Chris..

----- Original Message -----
From: "Olin Lagon" <olin@worldpoint.com>
To: "Erik van der Poel" <erik@netscape.com>; <www-international@w3.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 29, 2000 12:17 PM
Subject: RE: Accept-Language and q values


> Hi Erik,
>
> Are you interested in getting all of the language code values and storing
> them? If yes, then I haven't seen any software out there to specifically
> process it like this. We have written some server-side Java code that
takes
> the entire String value, like "ja,en;q=0.5", parses it, then stores each
> language attribute separately. We use this for language logging.
>
> For our Web applications that use the accept language to redirect, all we
do
> is take the String value again, then redirect based on the first language
> code, if available. If not, it checks the next and so forth bypassing any
q
> values. I don't think snippets of code like this exists for download, but
is
> fairly straightforward to write.
>
> Regards, Olin
>
> --
> Olin Lagon, Chief Architect      Voice: 808.780.3978 (direct)
> WorldPoint                       Toll Free: 888.452.3939 x3978
> 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 170   Fax: 808.539.3943
> Honolulu, Hawaii 96822           ICQ: 14808555
> Web: http://www.worldpoint.com/  Email: olin@worldpoint.com
> --
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: www-international-request@w3.org
> > [mailto:www-international-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Erik van der Poel
> > Sent: Friday, January 28, 2000 8:17 PM
> > To: www-international@w3.org
> > Subject: Accept-Language and q values
> >
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I'm wondering if there is any server-side software out there that
> > processes Accept-Language headers but has trouble if q values are
> > included. For example:
> >
> >   Accept-Language: ja,en;q=0.5
> >
> > I heard that MSIE emits q values. Have there been any problems with
> > that?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Erik
> >
> >
>

Received on Saturday, 29 January 2000 17:29:59 UTC