Re: Multiple language efforts?

Murray Maloney (murray@sco.com)
Fri, 21 Apr 1995 17:52:34 +0500


>
> Alan Batie writes:
> > I'm wondering if anyone has other options for dealing with multiple language
> > content management. The "obvious", but not very appealing, solutions are to
> > have separate logical content trees, whether on the same server or not, and
> > whether in parallel directory trees or in the same directories. A suggestion
> > was recently made to me that it would be nice if the browsers could select a
> > "preferred" language, and retrieve that if available, else retrieve the
> > default. I know that something similar is already possible with respect to
> > images, but I don't think it's really used --- the server doesn't send back
> > the embedded images unless the browser asks for them anyhow. Thoughts?
>
> I'm pretty sure you can do this with the cern server via
> content-negotiation and the Accept-Language parameter. I don't have my
> docs with me right now though, so I can't check. Anyone else have any
> thoughts?
>
> -Bill P.

Ya, we're planning to use Accept-Language in our localized versions
of SCO's forthcoming operating system with a Mosaic-based online
documentation and context-sensitive help system -- called scohelp.

I don't know all of the details, but basically we are laying multiple
language versions of the same doc onto a single server. The client
and server negotiate over Accept-Language and the server tries
to send something appropriate for that language. I say "tries"
because we decided not to translate some documents. If the
specific language requested is not available, then we fall back
to the server's default -- usually, but not necesarily, English.

Murray

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Murray C. Maloney Internet: murray@sco.com
Technical Publications Writer/Architect Uucp: ...uunet!sco!murray
SCO Canada, Inc. My Phone: (416) 960-4031
130 Bloor Street West, 10th Floor Fax: (416) 922-2704
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1N5 SCO Phone: (416) 922-1937
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Disclaimer: I'm speaking for myself. 'T ain't nobody else to blame but me.
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Sponsor member of Davenport Group Member of IETF HTML Working Group
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