113380 - default languages should be 'en-US, en' instead of 'en-US'

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: Internationalization, defect)

Description

[jdalbec]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:0.9.6) Gecko/20011120
BuildID:    2001112012

For correct content negotiation, the language defaults should be 'en-US'
followed by 'en' rather than 'en-US' alone.  Web servers that do content
negotiation are under no obligation to return an 'en' page if no 'en-US' page is
available.  They may fall back to Indonesian instead (see above URL).

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Using the default language settings, go to the above web page.
2. Now add 'en' to the language settings and try again.

Actual Results:  In (1) the page appears in Indonesian.

Expected Results:  In (2) the page appears in English.

Debian 2.2r4, kernel 2.4.12, KDE 2.1.2, AMD K6/MMX

Comment 1

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

i18n?

Comment 2

[Teruko Kobayashi]

Reassign to [e-mail].

Comment 3

[Roy Yokoyama]

teruko: is this Linux only?

Comment 4

[jdalbec]

No, the MacOS build does the same thing.  I don't use Mozilla on Windows.

Comment 5

[Ric Cefis]

*** Bug 123351 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Ric Cefis]

I've marked bug 123351 as a duplicate of this; as I noted in that bug, is it
possible to have mozilla have a language family default? For example, I have
settings of:

English/United Kingdom [en-gb]
English/United States [en-us]
Italian [it]
French [fr]

Shouldn't mozilla interpret this as:

English/United Kingdom [en-gb]
English/United States [en-us]
English [en]
Italian [it]
French [fr]

I assumed that if 'en-gb' wasn't found, mozilla would fall back on 'en'. I'm
sure this is possible, though I'm not so sure if this is feasible.

Also, this seems to apply to all OS (I see this on Win NT and XP). I do not have
sufficient Bugzilla permissions to change the setting above though...

Comment 7

[jdalbec]

What you assume is not how content negotiation works.
http://www.debian.org/intro/cn#howtoset

Comment 8

[Frank Tang]

good point, let's change it. 

Comment 9

[Frank Tang]

Attachment: patch

Comment 10

[Frank Tang]

I don't think client need to do that. But it won't hurt to change the default
setting to en-US, en

Comment 11

[Roy Yokoyama]

Comment on attachment 69576 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

/r=yokoyama

Comment 12

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

It might be better to have just [en] as the default for Mozilla
if you go by the concept of "English is just one of the languages".
Each localizers then can add their variety of English at the top to 
make it, [en-US] > [en] for the US version.

Comment 13

[Frank Tang]

momoi, the current proposal is to change the default of accept_language of
english localization from "en-US" to "en-US, en"

Comment 14

[Frank Tang]

I want to make sure both tao and rchen agree with this change. 

Comment 15

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

> momoi, the current proposal is to change the default of 
> accept_language of english localization from "en-US" to "en-US, en"

I know that and that is why I made my comments. I really think
this is an issue of what the default localization is for. Is it for
the US, or are we considering the main release to be for English users
around the world? Because we have to produce the main release in some
language, it would be best that that language is English.  That does not
mean it has to be for en-US. [en] has more universality.
At least for Mozilla's main build, that might be the correct 
answer. For Netscape's main release, it is clearly "[en-US], [en]".

Comment 16

[tao]

I am in favor of "en-US, en" assuming the implication is "en-US" > "en". 

Rationale: whether we like it or not, en-US is the default UI language and regional
setting Mozilla and Netscape clients ship with. Why make it "en" and force people
to produce one more "localized" build?

Comment 17

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

> Rationale: whether we like it or not, en-US is the default UI 
> language and regional setting Mozilla and Netscape clients ship with. 
> Why make it "en" and force people to produce one more "localized" build?

You should separate UI language issues from Accept-language issues.
Accept-language is about what lanaguge/regional variety of language the
user prefers to receive the content in. I can be using a US UI build but might
prefer Japanese content.  The regional settings are much more relevant to
Accept-Language settings than the UI language.
I looked at Mozilla's default Bookmarks and Sidebar tabs and I don't
see that the URLs there are US-centric. They are more of Mozilla
related links.
This is a pretty superficial look at the URLs in Mozilla and so
perhaps there are other issues I am not aware of. Again, I am not
making this point about Netscape's commercial build, which is
clearly [en-US] first.

Comment 18

[tao]

But, do we want to duplicate the pref and overwrite it in the commercial build?
Besides, correct me if I am wrong, the urls in Mozilla do point to US websites 
which produce content in US English.

Comment 19

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

> Besides, correct me if I am wrong, the urls in Mozilla do point 
> to US websites which produce content in US English.

Tao, the more I think about this issue, the more I feel we should
leave this alone for now. Thanks for the discussion and I will stop
here.

Comment 20

[Frank Tang]

the qestion is in the mozilla "en-US" build, what should be the default value
for accept_language. Currently it is "en-US", and we propose to change it to
"en-US, en". The change WON'T change the number of localized build, it will only
change the setting IN a particular localized build. 

The reason is sending "en-US" in the accept_language won't match any "en"
content on random websites. Therefore if the websites do NOT have content for
"en-US" but have content for "en" or "en-GB" it won't return them . However, if
we change the default setting to "en-US, en", then it WILL match to either
"en-US", "en" or "en-GB" 

Comment 21

[Frank Tang]

it looks, like every one agree with changing from "en-US" to "en-US, en"
ask for sr=

Comment 22

[Alec Flett]

Comment on attachment 69576 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

sr=alecf

Comment 23

[Frank Tang]

nsbeta1
this will make mozilla work better with server which support accept_language.

Comment 24

[Mike Shaver (:shaver -- probably not reading bugmail closely)]

Comment on attachment 69576 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

a=shaver for 0.9.9

Comment 25

[Frank Tang]

fixed and check in

Comment 26

[Teruko Kobayashi]

I tested this in 2002-02-26-03 trunk build.  The default language has not 
changed to 'en-US, en'. It is still 'en-US'.  I reopen this bug.

Comment 27

[Frank Tang]

probably we have not change the ns build. 

Comment 28

[Tobias Weibel]

build 2002022603 w2k

I can't delete the language "English/United States [en-us]" in the preferences
dialog.

1. Open the preferences dialog and switch to "Languages"
2. Delete "English/United States [en-us]"
3. Click to "OK".
4. Reopen the preferences dialog. "English/United States [en-us]" is still there.

Is this a new bug or is this behavior due to attachment 69576 [details] [diff] [review]?

Comment 29

[Luke Koleszar]

RE: Comment #28 
See bug 120469 "Unable to remove navigator languages"

Comment 30

[Frank Tang]

ok. I check in the /ns changes close it again.

Comment 31

[Teruko Kobayashi]

Verified as fixed in 04-02 trunk build (all platform).