RE: Image or text for 'Internationalization'?

 

-----Original Message-----
From: www-international-request@w3.org
[mailto:www-international-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Martin Duerst
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2004 5:18 PM
To: Richard Ishida; www-international@w3.org
Cc: 'Shawn Lawton Henry'; Masayasu Ishikawa
Subject: Re: Image or text for 'Internationalization'?


Hello Richard,


At 06:41 04/11/15, Richard Ishida wrote:
 >
 >When I put together the template for FAQs and the like on the
>/International site, I wasn't sure whether to use a graphic or text for
the  >word "Internationalization" in the top blue area that represents
the name  >of the Activity.  As I'm always working on the site in great
haste, I put  >it in text, intending to make a proper decision later.  I
went for text to  >make translation easier, but by aligning the baseline
of the word with the  >bottom of the blue, managed to produce an
obstacle to localization too.

I'm not sure I understand how making it a graphic would solve the
descender problem.

 >If you take the example of http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset
you'll  >see that the Japanese and Swedish translators took a different
approach  >here. One translated it, the other didn't.  Note that one
reason for the  >Swedish decision was that descenders in the Swedish
version would descend  >below the blue space.
 >
 >So I probably ought to change this.  But I have two questions:
 >
 >1. should that title be translated or not?  (maybe the answer is 'it
depends')

Yes, it depends. It shouldn't depend on decenders, though.
It should mainly depend on how well established e.g. a translation
is,...
For decenders, I think there are the following ways to deal with it:
- Have the decenders stick out. This would have to be tested on various
   browsers. Also, the fact that other links (Publications, FAQs,...
   are just below the text would probably mean some additional changes).
- Have the bottom of the decenders be alligned (in those languages
   where there are descenders).
- Change the overall design so that it's independent of descender
issues.
   Overall, the number of different font styles used on the page is on
   the high end, so some streamlining might help there, too.


 >2. should I use a graphic or not? (because it would be easier to
translate  >text - mind you, it wouldn't be that hard to manage a
graphic, given the  >amount of translation we have to deal with)

It's text, so it should use text. I don't see how a graphic would solve
the design (descender) problem.

At 11/14/2004 5:18 PM Martin Duerst wrote

>Aside:
>The two links:
>http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset.ja
>http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset.en

>work without problem, but the link
>http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset.sv
>gives a 406, not acceptable. The first reason for this is probably that
my Accept-
>Language header says that I'm okay with Japanese and English, but not
with Swedish.
>But clicking on a link that explicitly says "Swedish" and not being
able to get to the >Swedish page directly is a problem.
>My guess is that one way to fix this is to point to the full file name
"O-
>charset.sv.html". Another may be to change some server settings.

I had the same problem with IE 6.  I could not go to either the .ja or
.sv links until I added them in my language preference settings.  I to
fee that one should be able to go to these links even though one may not
have the language set as a preference.  It may be confusing to the
reader trying to just view these links for reference.

Regards, Russ

Received on Monday, 15 November 2004 20:45:56 UTC