LWN: Comments on "Highlights in Fedora 26"

Highlights in Fedora 26

farnz — Wed, 26 Jul 2017 13:30:42 +0000

If you paid for the full geolocation product in question, you did get an error bar (my employer does, and at the time of the story, I looked at our data to see that the product in the news gave us the location as longitude, latitude and 1,500km by 1,000km error radius for the problem IPs). The trouble was that there was a much cheaper (possibly even free - I can't remember at this remove) product that would give you the longitude and latitude of the centre of the ellipse they drew on the map, but not the error radiuses. Combine the cheap product with people ignoring the warning that you had no error bars, and you got into a mess; IIRC, some companies even drew on the underlying data feed, but hid the warning about no error bars on the cheap product from the user.

Plus, too many people have a "computer says so, must be true" attitude to precise results from a computer. This was a precise result, as it was stripped of the error radiuses, ergo it must be accurate.

Highlights in Fedora 26

mathstuf — Wed, 26 Jul 2017 12:22:54 +0000

That "center of the US" problem could also have been solved with an error bar.

Highlights in Fedora 26

flussence — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 14:40:53 +0000

Geolocation for any purpose that doesn't involve a map is a horrible idea all around. Reminds me of the recent story about a woman living at the geographic centre point of a US state; the GeoIP database returned that point for all “street address not found” results. All manner of horrible things happened to them.

Highlights in Fedora 26

nix — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 17:00:31 +0000

It's terrible web design even for monolingual countries.

For years, my mother (in Yorkshire) was greeted with an Italian Google homepage (well, OK, I flipped the relevant cookie to stop it, but I shouldn't have had to!), because her satellite Internet provider had its satellite downlink in Italy and nobody updated the geoip maps for years.

Selecting language by Accept-language

bmn1 — Sat, 22 Jul 2017 10:03:44 +0000

WFM. Either it happens in specific sites, with specific languages or it has just changed.

$ curl -lis https://getfedora.org --header 'Accept-language: en'  | grep -e Language: -e h1
Content-Language: en
            <h1>Choose Freedom. Choose Fedora.</h1>
        <h1 class="thin">Want more Fedora options?</h1>
        <h1 class="thin">Be connected & informed.</h1>
        <h1 class="thin">Read the docs.</h1>
        <h1 class="thin">Get help.</h1>

$ curl -lis https://getfedora.org --header 'Accept-language: fr'  | grep -e Language: -e h1
Content-Language: fr
            <h1>Choisissez la liberté. Choisissez Fedora.</h1>
        <h1 class="thin">Plus d’options Fedora ?</h1>
        <h1 class="thin">Restez en contact et au courant.</h1>
        <h1 class="thin">Lire les documentations.</h1>
        <h1 class="thin">Obtenir de l’aide</h1>

$ curl -lis https://getfedora.org --header 'Accept-language: es'  | grep -e Language: -e h1
Content-Language: es
            <h1>Elija libertad. Elija Fedora.</h1>
        <h1 class="thin">¿Quiere más opciones?</h1>
        <h1 class="thin">Permanezca conectado e informado.</h1>
        <h1 class="thin">Lea la documentación.</h1>
        <h1 class="thin">Obtenga ayuda.</h1>

Bugs can be opened in https://pagure.io/fedora-websites/issues, or you can also mail webmaster AT fedoraproject DOT org.

Better (or new) translations can be provided with https://fedora.zanata.org/ joining the Fedora localization project.

Geo-language

Wol — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 14:12:19 +0000

Couldn't agree more!

Even in the "home" of the English language, namely England ...

Firstly, in geo-political terms there's no such place ... it's called "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (so our ISO code of GB/GBR pisses me off for not covering large chunks of the place!)

Even in terms of England, "proper" English is only spoken in the south-eastern bit - in the west they speak "welsh" - in quotes because "welsh" is the anglo-saxon term for the Britons who were here before them so I'm including Cornish and other such languages ...

Scots is not the language of the Scots - they speak Gaelic and their name is derived from the Roman name for Ireland ... Scots the language is the language of the Angles! who live between the Forth and the Tyne.

Basically modern geo-political boundaries bear no resemblance whatsoever to cultural/linguistic boundaries, and as has been said are rubbish for making such decisions. And we can probably blame a lot of the post-1945 political instability on the fact that Westerners seem oblivious to that fact cf all the nice straight-line borders imposed in Africa and the middle east, and the fighting that has gone on since ...

Cheers,
Wol

Highlights in Fedora 26

kchr — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 09:59:24 +0000

We're talking about the actual language used for GUI messages, not other locale settings. I think that if there should be any assumtions whatsoever made on what language to use as default in your browser, it should be based on the language environment settings the browser run in (LC_LANG, nothing more).

It is most likely to be what the user prefers to read in - any other factors (like location, keyboard layout) are simply not good enough to base a _language_ decision on.

See, a computer user is most likely using its OS with an appropriate language set. If this is not the case, the user is probably using a public computer, which probably has the most common language set based on the actual location and major languages spoken there. Which means no further assumtions needed here either.

Any other case should be considered fringe and not suitable for making these decisions.

Highlights in Fedora 26

farnz — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 08:43:01 +0000

If my memory isn't failing me, non-English Windows using Internet Explorer 4 through 7 (not tested recent versions) defaulted to setting up a sensible Accept-Language header, matching the language in use for the OS. Thus, trusting Accept-Language would get you the same language as the rest of the OS - if a Belgian set their Windows system to Dutch, Accept-Language would ask for "nl" (or "nl-be" - I can't remember if it took timezone etc into account).

I don't know if this has changed in newer versions, or if my memory is failing me, mind.

Geo-language

oldtomas — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 07:54:58 +0000

I'm also one of those who downright hate geo-based language choice (thus ignoring the choice made by the user herself! Ain't that infuriating?).
I see that as a part of patronizing software (the software knows better than the user), which has the huge danger of developing into a self fulfilling prophecy. I see the potential for dystopia there, honestly.
Problem is, there's a huge industry out there betting their farms into manipulating people's behaviour -- that creates a terrible symbiosis with this kind of "patronizing" software...

Anyway -- glad I'm not alone. Phew :-)

Highlights in Fedora 26

yoe — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 07:41:23 +0000

> One perhaps amusing side note is that the web site for the classroom lab (and quite a few others) tries to switch the language of the content based on the browser's geographic location, which is probably quite helpful to most. If, however, your language abilities do not match your current location, as is true for me, it gets a little annoying to keep switching back to English after following links.

No, it is not "amusing". It is terrible web design. It works for countries that are English-only, and fails for just about everything else:

- There seems to be a misbelief among north american developers that Belgium is a French-speaking country, where the reality is that it is a Dutch/French bilingual country, with Dutch spoken mostly in the north, and French mostly in the south. I can't count the number of sites that have greeted me in French, in the (mistaken) belief that my French is better than my English. I'm sure this isn't specific to Belgium
- It fails utterly for expats like yourself who don't speak the local language.
- There are plenty of places in the world where multiple languages are spoken equally among the local populace. In those areas, the best a website can do is offend half the people for getting them the wrong language

There is a scheme called "Accept-Language" in HTTP, which would have been a better match, except for the fact that most users don't configure their browsers to do it right, and therefore it doesn't work in many cases.

If a website wants to select a default language based on geography, they're making a terrible mistake. Even so, *if* they're going to do that, at least a language choice against that default must be retained at all costs. A user is more likely to know which language he speaks than a webserver is.

Highlights in Fedora 26

cesarb — Wed, 19 Jul 2017 16:56:53 +0000

> It seems a safe bet that if the browser display its messages with the value of this variable, the content should also be displayed in this language.

That's been broken on Fedora for a while: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1005640

Web sites choosing language

gidoca — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 10:42:56 +0000

Being from the German speaking part, I do occasionally get ads in French and Italian on Youtube.

Highlights in Fedora 26

bernat — Sun, 16 Jul 2017 06:07:38 +0000

In Linux, "OS" language would be the value of LC_MESSAGES. It seems a safe bet that if the browser display its messages with the value of this variable, the content should also be displayed in this language. This doesn't mean that some users should be prevented to choose something else, like you do.

Web sites choosing language

bernat — Sun, 16 Jul 2017 06:04:53 +0000

In Switzerland, it's that simple. There are 4 official languages, German is the dominant one (60%) and everything just defaults to German. Even swiss websites just default to German. Google serves me ads only in German. Twitter serves me ads only in German. And I am not in the German-part of the country.

Highlights in Fedora 26

Creideiki — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 22:14:55 +0000

"OS language" is not a well-defined term, and it is not at all certain that you want to use the same language for different things.

As an example, I live in Sweden, and my native language is Swedish, but I set LC_MESSAGES and LC_COLLATE to POSIX so I can search for error messages on Stack Overflow and find files with The One True ASCIIbetical File Name Order (TM). However, I quite like local things like the letters ÅÄÖ, decimal commas, A4 paper, SI units, and weeks that start on Mondays, so all the other LC_* variables are set to sv_SE.utf8. On top of that, I run KDE, which has its own system for localisation, and who knows exactly how that works.

It has also been my experience that Swedish translations of web sites, even ones from really huge corporations, are embarrassingly bad, probably because almost every adult Swede can read English so nobody bothers to translate properly. I therefore tell Firefox to prefer languages in the order en-gb, en-us, en, sv-se, sv. Not that it helps, since many sites do geo-IP lokups and present a machine translated "Swedish" page anyway.

Web sites choosing language

giraffedata — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 22:04:27 +0000

You are in country X, you get the official primary language of country X

Well, it can't be that simple, because a lot of countries, covering much of the planet, do not have an official primary language. The US has no official language; Canada has two, of equal status. And of course there is room for disagreement as to what is a country and probably as to what if anything is an official language of a country.

So if it's by country, someone had to sit down and assign one language to each country for web serving purposes, and I wonder why such person wouldn't use some more meaningful geography than country territories. Maybe there was already a table mapping IP address to country?

Highlights in Fedora 26

bernat — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 21:48:32 +0000

Doesn't by default browsers use OS language? How could it be incorrect?

Web sites choosing language

bernat — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 21:47:03 +0000

Yes, there is nothing fancy. You are in country X, you get the official primary language of country X. I am in Switzerland and I get everything in German (website, ads) while my browser is correctly configured to get English and French only.

Web sites choosing language

giraffedata — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 21:44:32 +0000

<sarcasm>And everyone lives in countries with exactly one official language, so that's not a problem.<sarcasm>

Do you think these automatic region-base language selectors use official languages of countries? I don't know how they work, but I'd assume they have a table of regions (as distinguishable by IP address) and popular languages, without regard to political boundaries or legal status of languages.

It does sound really unfair to people who can't read the most popular language in the region they're in, though, which must be pretty common. I don't travel enough ever to have experienced this myself.

Highlights in Fedora 26

ballombe — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 09:38:17 +0000

Except that Fedora could make sure their browser set Accept-Language correctly.

Highlights in Fedora 26

nlucas — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 23:18:54 +0000

Worse than that is living in a country with only one official language but with very low-quality translations from open source sites...

Highlights in Fedora 26

Creideiki — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 15:28:02 +0000

I assume it's because that's what Google does, and therefore nobody sends correct Accept-Language headers anymore.

<sarcasm>And everyone lives in countries with exactly one official language, so that's not a problem.</sarcasm>

Highlights in Fedora 26

eru — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 14:24:22 +0000

tries to switch the language of the content based on the browser's geographic location, which is probably quite helpful to most.

An odd idea, considering all modern browsers transmit the user's configured language preference in the requests (HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE=...).