Re: Language subtags (aliases)

Henrik Nordstrom wrote:
> Why are we even having all these aliases? In most cases it should be
> sufficient with the base language alone.

Eventually partial-code negotiation can be added to do that. It's not
present yet.

>
> Language tags may contain all sorts of subtags, with the subtags
> changing relatively frequently. Having each and every possible
> combination listed isn't very realistic.

True. And we are not aiming at that. Only the ISO 639 languages and
their commonly used sub-codes are being listed.

Right now it's to improve the performance of the negotiation, each
detected but failed language requires disk IO. The more commonly
occurring aliases we can reduce work on the better. This is the quickest
and easiest way while waiting for reliable sub-tag matching.

When sub-tag negotiation is reliably doable we can reduce the aliases to
just the weird exceptions.

>
> See
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-ltru-4646bis
> and
> http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry

I know. And when browsers really start using this widely we will _need_
the sub-tag negotiation. For now its not appearing to be that common.
Worse are the browsers sending "chrome://<uri>" where uri is a file
needing to be downloaded from an arbitrary server somewhere in order to
find out the visitors language preferences.

>
> An convoluted example (copy-pasted)
>
> en-Latn-GB-boont-r-extended-sequence-x-private
>
> English language
> in Latin script
> As used in the United Kingdom region
> With Boontling jargon
> With extension "r" "extended" & "sequence" properties
> With a application-defined private property "private"
>
> which for most purposes is equal to
>
> en-GB
>
> which for most purposes is satisfied by
>
> en
>
> Regards
> Henrik
>

Amos

-- 
Please be using
   Current Stable Squid 2.7.STABLE6 or 3.0.STABLE18
   Current Beta Squid 3.1.0.13