Re: Multiple language efforts?

Goran Oberg (Goran.Oberg@dc.luth.se)
Mon, 24 Apr 1995 00:50:22 +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?

I use language encoding of files at www.luth.se in a way that would let a
language-aware client request a document in a specific language. It is
done by having suffixes express the content-language. I don't know the
CERN_httpd source code by heart by I recall it having quite extensive
routines to really handle content and encoding negotiation.

Today I use these suffixes primarily as a comfortable way to name different
versions of a document. The language specification in the HTTP-reply is
today only a nice side-effect as it seems to be ignored by all common clients.

I won't go into detail about how it's done unless someone really wants
me to. I recommend that anyone interested in this reads the documentation:
<URL:http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/User/Config/Suffixes.html>

Wkr

/G

--
 Gvran Vberg       University of Lulee, SWEDEN          Student MSc CS
 Kerhusvdgen 5:414 <URL:http://www.luth.se/~goggi/>     Adm./CoAdm. of
 S-977 54 Lulee    Goran.Oberg@dc.luth.se       {www,wais,ftp,gopher}.luth.se
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