|
INSTITUTO DE AGROQUÍMICA Y TECNOLOGÍA DE ALIMENTOS (IATA)
Spanish Council for Scientific Research
Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology
Automatic language selection
Web servers frequently have different versions of their pages, written in different languages. If you ask for a page from your navigator, the server will deliver you its default language version.
Nevertheless you may configure your navigator so that it will negociate the language the server will deliver the page you asked for. Then everytime you ask for a page, your navigator will send your language preferences list too in order to be known by the server. Configuration just means to select an ordered list (most to least) of language names.
For more information about this question see the Apache documentation on content negociation .
Navigator configuration
The preferred language list is configured in a different way for each different navigator. You will find below proper information about this topic for the most common navigators. In case you were using a different one, you will need to consult its User Manual in order to set your preferences.
- Netscape 4.x (Español)
(Edición) -> (Preferencias) -> (Navegador + Idiomas) You will get the preferred languages list box pressing on those buttons or options. Press Añadir to add new languages to your list. The language at the top of the list will be the most preferred one. Using th buttons up and down you can move a language along the list changing so its relative preference.
- Netscape 4.x (English)
(Edit) -> (Preferences) -> (Navigator + Languages) - I.Explorer 5.x (Español)
(Herramientas) -> (Opciones de Internet) -> (Idiomas) - I.Explorer 5.x (English)
(Tools) -> (Internet Options) -> (Languages) - I.Explorer 4.x
(Ver) -> (Opciones de Internet) -> (Idiomas)
(View) -> (Internet Options) -> (Languages)- lynx
- Edit the file .lynxrc and set the languages list following a sintax similar to the following one:
preferred_language=es; q=1.0, en; q=0.5 wich sets that the spanish (es) is the most preferred and english (en) your second option in absence of a spanish version. In absence of both, any language would be accepted (since there are no more languages in the list). q coefficients sets preference degree per unit. Another way to set language preferences is to use the 'O' command while in lynx.
To avoid mistakes, each languages has a code which has been standardized by RFC1766 and RFC2277 of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Both follow prior recommendations of ISO639 norm which stablishes that "es" means spanish, "en" means english, "pt" means portuguese, and so on.
It is common to see subcodded languages. In example, es-GB or es-US, trying to differenciate british english from U.S.A. english. If you are using these kind of options in your navigator settings, remember that it is strongly recommended to also include the language without the extension.
References:
IETF , RFC1766 , RFC2277 , ISO639
(do not spend time looking for documents in the ISO Switzerland headquarter server, http://www.iso.ch/ , except if you are decided to spend money...)
Behaviour of the IATA WWW server
The IATA web server plays the language negotiation explained before. Not all of the IATA pages are available in every language, but you will always get the the language version closest to your preferences.
While in a page, if you press on one of the flags, the IATA web server will deliver you directly that language version of the present page without language negotiation.
If you then follow a link from a page so directly requested, that page explicit language will be preferred before any of your navigator preferred languages list. You will be able in this way to follow a series of links in a new language without changing your navigator settings.
This behaviour is specific of the IATA web server and does not belong to the standard language negotition. It does neither use "cookies " nor JavaScript so you are not requested to have them activated in your web browser.
The IATA web server does not take in account language subcodes, extracting the base language code from them and using it instead.
Why doesn't it works ?
First of all, it may be due to no availability of the page in your language. We are sorry for it. Secondly, your web navigator could have not been set for language negociation in the way explain before. Please, try to reread about it. In third place it may be due to the presence of "Proxies" or web "Caches", which have been put to work by your Internet Service Provider.
Many people route web requests through a cache, even without knowing about it, because Providers use to automaticaly reroute whole web traffic through proxies.
Some proxies do not understand content negotiation. This results in them caching a page in one language and serving that, even if a different language is requested by the preferences set in your navigator.
The specific language negotiation of the IATA web server could make you to receive your preferred version along several pages if you press explicitly on your language flag in the first page of the series, in case that the initial language negotiation would fail.
Nevertheless some proxies filter out even taht explicit language request, making impossible to deliver the orrect language. Apart from this, we recommend you to clean periodically the local cache of your own navigator (both Memory and Disk) because sometimes it is the own -bad configurated- navigator that blocks the needed refreshing of page contents.