IETF policy on encodings and languages

John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org> wrote:
> That makes very little sense to me.  It's true that www.vatican.va
> provides a Latin user interface, but a site presenting English law is
> going to have an English interface only, even though the older laws
> are in Latin or Old Norman French.  *Nobody* needs an Old Norman
> French user interface.

Sorry, I wasn't clear.  When I said "Latin section", I meant "section
meant for Latin users".  The site you're talking about isn't meant for
Latin-speaking users, so it doesn't have a Latin interface.  That's
perfectly fine.

> Similarly, gutenberg.org provides only an English interface, even
> though it provides e-books in 55 languages, from 37527 in English and
> 2356 in French down to 21 languages with a single book each.  (There
> are other PG-like sites in and for many countries; see the WP
> article.)

One example doesn't make the rule.  I would argue that Project Gutenberg
_should_ have interfaces in other languages, because it is offering
(some) content that is almost exclusively going to be consumed by people
speaking (possibly only) these other languages.  I'm assuming that not
that many monolingual English speakers/readers are reading those 2,356
French books - Mainly French-speaking people are reading those books,
and a French interface should be made available to them.  I can
understand, however, that PG doesn't currently have the resources to
translate its interface.  But that doesn't mean that it should not be a
goal.

> I can't agree there either.  The only requirement in Gemini imposed on
> the query string is that the URL sent after a 10 or 11 response
> contains whatever the user entered as the query string.  There is
> nothing to prevent link lines from containing query strings
> themselves.

We're talking about different things.  I'm not talking about link lines
and query strings.  My point of contention is the use of HTML-style
(<key>=<value>)* formatting for query strings.

> In the Gemini PG interface I plan to write as soon as I have a chance,
> the UI will be entirely in English, the only language I speak.  When
> you are searching, you can include words in the query like "lang:en"
> or "media:text/plain" or "author:Twain", as well as plain words in any
> script, more or less like Google Search.

That makes perfect sense: you only speak English, you only design
English interfaces.  I have absolutely no problem with that.  But you
should at least open up the possibility of having other interfaces, even
if you don't write them yourself.  Non-English-readers will thank you
for it.

~aravk | ~nothien

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