Re: Proposal: Locale Preferences API

I think that's too weak. The link between language and locale is stronger than just an "attempt" at locale identification. It's true that sometimes the language tag set in the user agent's preferences is not as expressive as one would like, but I think ideally there should be no distinction.

Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect (Lab126)
Chair (W3C I18N WG)

Sent from my Kindle Fire HD

Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org> wrote:

Hi Marcos,

It seems a reasonable suggestion to allow scripts to access the
prioritised list of browser/system language preferences, and to know
when they are changed.

I guess my concern is more for the wording of the proposal, which seems
to suggest that this is a solution for locale management, whereas the
information sent in the Accept-Language header is really just about
preferred language.

It's true that often that language preferences are used as part of the
process of inferring the locale (which typically needs region-based or
other information over and above language), and that sometimes language
tags can contain useful locale-related information, but the info sent in
Accept-Language headers doesn't always represent "the end-user's
preferred languages and regional settings" - often it's just the
preferred languages.  (See
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-accept-lang-locales for
more discussion around that).

That said, it seems like many of the use cases that lead to this
proposal are actually related to managing the *language* in which the
user is interacting with a page or app, and I think that the proposal
certainly makes sense for that.

So, I would suggest that you tighten the wording of the proposal, eg.

"The idea is to expose to script the language tags that represents the
user's locale preferences (akin to the language tags that are normally
sent with HTTP's `Accept-Languages` header)."
=>
"The idea is to expose to script the language tags that are normally
sent by the browser with HTTP's Accept-Language header, which can be
used in determining the language of the user interface/page, and in some
cases for an attempt at locale identification."

etc.

hth
RI






What might be interesting is a process that does the following:

1. check whether the browser already knows about the user's preferred
locale(s)
2. if not, use the information sent in the Accept-Language header by the
browser to make some initial guesses (particularly about the language in
which to communicate to the user), then
3. allow the user to indicate other locale information that's relevant
besides language (at whatever level is appropriate), such as what their
local region is, via an interface provided by the browser or the page,
and *then*
4. write that information back into the browser preferences for future
use - not by overwriting the language preferences, but in a separate
location that stores preferred locales.

This, of course, introduces a bunch more issues wrt privacy.



RI




On 26/07/2013 09:09, Marcos Caceres wrote:
> Dear Internationalization Working Group,
>
> tl;dr: Mozilla would like your feedback on the following proposal to extend HTML to expose the user's locale preferences - which would allow for more dynamic localization of content. To HTML, we would like to add a `navigator.languages` attribute and a `languageschange` event (and corresponding EventHandler on the Navigator interface).
>
> The following markdown is also viewable online (feedback in the form of Pull Requests is welcome!):
> https://github.com/marcoscaceres/Locale-Preferences-API/blob/master/proposal.md

>
> Please be sure to cc me in replies, as I'm not subscribed to the list.
>
> ====
>
> # Proposal: Locale Preferences API
>
> ## Abstract
>
> This document proposes an extension to HTML's `Navigator` interface to enable
> dynamic localization of content. The idea is to expose to script the language
> tags that represents the user's locale preferences (akin to the language tags
> that are normally sent with HTTP's `Accept-Languages` header).
>
> Also proposed is a "`languageschange`" event, so that scripts can be notified if
> the user changes the ordering of their preferred locales.
>
> ## Problem we are trying to solve
>
> In order to support dynamic localization of content on the client-side,
> developers need to have access to the user's locale  preferences. In user
> agents, this is generally represented as an ordered list  of [BCP47] language
> tags, which is shared with servers through the `Accept-Languages` HTTP header.
>
> Traditionally, to access this list of language tags developers need to query a
> server to tell them what the browser's language preferences are set to (i.e., by
> reflecting the `Accept-Languages` HTTP header - and usually stripping away the
> "q" values).  This has led to the creation of various xhr-based hacks and
> workarounds on the client side. See: [JavaScript for detecting browser language
> preference](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1043339/javascript-for-

> detecting-browser-language-preference) .
>
> There are a number of issues with this work-around:
>
>   * because of the reliance on making a HTTP request, the values are not
> immediately available to script.
>
>   * because of the reliance on making a XHR-based request, this becomes
> impractical if the user is not connected to the network.
>
>   * because of the reliance on HTTP requests, it's not possible to immediately
> know if the user's preferred language order has changes (even though it is
> rare - FireFox applications rely on this to be able to maintain the UI localized
> without needing to reboot the device).
>
> To overcome these limitations, and solely in Mozilla's FirefoxOS, developers are
> relying on a  proprietary
> [mozSettings API](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/window.navigator.mozSettings)
> to get notified when the user's locale preferences change.
>
> In order to address the issues described above, and to move away from having to
> rely on a proprietary solution, this document proposes the following extensions
> to the [HTML]'s Navigator interface.
>
> ## Acquiring the end-user's locale preferences
>
> The end-user's locale preferences represents the end-user's preferred languages
> and regional settings, which are derived from the operating system or directly
> from the user agent. As there are numerous ways a user agent can derive the end-
> user's preferred languages and regional settings, the means by which those
> values are derived are beyond the scope of this document and left up to the
> implementation.
>
> ## Extensions to Navigator interface
>
> ```WebIDL
> partial interface Navigator : EventTarget {
>     readonly attribute DOMString[]  languages;
>              attribute EventHandler onlanguageschange;
> }
> ```
>
> Note: We've received feedback that TC39 is not in favor of API's using frozen
> /read-only arrays. Alternatives to the above attribute are:
>
>   1. `sequence<DOMString> getLanguages()` method - thought this has been
>      internally criticized as being "javaish".
>
>   2.  Willfully violate WebIDL's ban on using sequences on attributes, and make
>       `languages` just return `sequence<DOMString>`.
>
> ## The `languages` attribute
>
> When getting, the languages attribute returns a read only platform Array
> [WebIDL] of valid language tags in canonical form [BCP47]. The array is ordered
> from most preferred to least preferred, where the first item is the language tag
> that represents the user's most preferred language.
>
> ## Event handlers
>
> If the user updates their locale preferences in such a way that it would cause
> the ordering of language tags change, then the user agent MUST perform the
> following steps:
>
> 1. Let lang list be the updated list of preferred locales.
>
> 2. Queue a task to perform the following:
>
> 2.1 If the first item of the lang list is not the same value as the value of
> the 'navigator' object's `language` attribute, update the `navigator` object's `
> attribute` to be the first item lang list.
>
> 2.2 Update the values of `navigator`'s `languages` attribute so they are the
> same as those in lang list.
>
> 2.3 Fire a simple event named "`languageschange`" at the `navigator` object.
>
> The task source for these steps is the DOM manipulation task source.
>
> ## Privacy considerations
>
> As with navigator.language, there are privacy implications in exposing the
> user's language preferences, as it can potentially be used to infer both the
> physical location (to at least a country level) and potentially the user's
> ethnic background (in those that choose have explicitly selected more than one
> language preference). These values can also be exploited, together, with other
> data to uniquely identify users.
>
> However, these values are already shared with servers with every HTTP request,
> thus this API does not exacerbate the finger-printing situation.
>
> Regardless, implementors are encouraged to reflect the value of
> navigator.language unless the user has explicitly indicated that the site in
> question is allowed access to the information.
>
> ## Known usability issues
>
> It is envisioned that the primary purpose for this API will be to take a list of
> language-tags supported by an application and compare it with the list of
> language-tags that represent the user's locale preferences.
>
> Because of the nature of language tags, working with language tags can be
> notoriously difficult - particularly when comparing two lists for changes.
>
> See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=889616

>
> To make this API useful in practice currently requires a supporting i18n library
> (e.g., [Mozilla's L20n: Localization 2.0 library ](https://github.com/l20n/l20n.js)).
>
> To make it possible to use this API on its own, Mozilla is discussing with TC-39
> the possibility of exposing the LookupSupportedLocales and
> CanonicalizeLanguageTag abstract algorithms as part of an extension of
> [Ecma-402].
>
> ## References
>
> [BCP47]
>   - [Tags for Identifying Languages](http://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp47)
> [Ecma-402]
>   - [ECMAScript® Internationalization API Specification ](http://www.ecma-international.org/ecma-402/1.0/ECMA-402.pdf)
>
> ## Related Mozilla bugs
>
> The following bugs motivated Mozilla to put together this proposal. The use
> cases are have mainly been driven by FirefoxOS, though they've also come up
> else where (e.g., in with Firefox Extensions).
>
> * [bug 889335 - navigator.languages](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=889335)
> * [Bug 780953 - Add language change event](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=780953)
> * [Bug 889617 - Provide API for user requested language fallback](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=889617)
> * [Bug 288670 - Use intl.accept_languages to choose the locale for a package if the current locale is unavailable](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=288670)
> * [Bug 562648 - Prioritized locale list for fallback of strings or add-ons](language/translation fall-back; fallback is always en-US)]
>
>
>
> --
> Marcos Caceres
>
>
>
>


--
Richard Ishida, W3C
http://rishida.net/