52925 - Cannot set '*' as Language

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Internationalization, defect, P5)

Description

[Björn Höhrmann]

RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1) allows the wildchar * for 'Accept-Language'. I'm unable to 
add * to the language preferences.

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

[e-mail] - where exactly are you attempting to set this? The 
Preferences UI?

Gerv

Comment 2

[Keyser Sose]

Closing since their has been no response from author. If anyone can figure this
out we can reopen it.

Comment 3

[Teruko Kobayashi]

Verified as Invalid.

Comment 4

[Björn Höhrmann]

Well, I've assigned it to the component called 'preferences' so I thought it 
must be quite obvious where I'm attemping to configure this, yes, the 
preferences UI, there is no other function that exhibits such a functionality. 

It's still impossible to add '*' as a language.

Comment 5

[Chad Austin]

Isn't language * implied?  What would adding it to the list actually mean?  I
have a feeling this is invalid.

Comment 6

[Björn Höhrmann]

RFC 2616:
[...]
14.4 Accept-Language

   The Accept-Language request-header field is similar to Accept, but
   restricts the set of natural languages that are preferred as a
   response to the request. Language tags are defined in section 3.10.

       Accept-Language = "Accept-Language" ":"
                         1#( language-range [ ";" "q" "=" qvalue ] )
       language-range  = ( ( 1*8ALPHA *( "-" 1*8ALPHA ) ) | "*" )

   Each language-range MAY be given an associated quality value which
   represents an estimate of the user's preference for the languages
   specified by that range. The quality value defaults to "q=1". For
   example,

       Accept-Language: da, en-gb;q=0.8, en;q=0.7

   would mean: "I prefer Danish, but will accept British English and
   other types of English." A language-range matches a language-tag if
   it exactly equals the tag, or if it exactly equals a prefix of the
   tag such that the first tag character following the prefix is "-".
   The special range "*", if present in the Accept-Language field,
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   matches every tag not matched by any other range present in the
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   Accept-Language field.
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[...]

And no, it isn't implied. If the user agents sends

  Accept-Language: de

a document with

  Content-Language: en

is defined as not acceptable. I for example use

  Accept-Language: de;q=1.0, en;q=0.7, *;q=0.1

So documents in all languages are acceptable, but I prefer english or better 
german.

Comment 7

[Chad Austin]

confirmed

Comment 8

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

->i18n.

Comment 9

[Roy Yokoyama]

assigning to ftang

Comment 10

[Frank Tang]

HTTP1.1 does not specify how user agent's ui should be. We could chose to add UI
to allow '*' or NOT.
Reassign to jbeteak and mark this bug as "P5"

Comment 11

[[e-mail] (away - not reading bugmail)]

accepting for "future"

Comment 12

[Frank Tang]

jbetak's contract is up. Bulk move bugs to ftang

Comment 13

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.2a) Gecko/20020910"

I do not think that this is a UI only issue:

By default, the "*" is not sent by Mozilla (in HTTP/1.1 with other languages
defined, at least).

For sure, RFC2616 does not define UI issues.

But the question remains:
Should Mozilla be able to send "*" as the last accepted language ?
The answer seems to me to be yes;
Then the user should have a mean to configure this behaviour.

NB: Could be 'user.js"(!?), or a check box on Languages, or...

PS: I don't know if the lack of "*" is a big deal or not.

Comment 14

[Adam Hauner]

-> to default owner (rather than ftang's WONTFIX)

Comment 15

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

WONTFIX. You can always add "*" to intl.accept_languages in about:config, but I wouldn't recommend it: if no languages match you are probably better off with a default version than with whichever version is last in the list, which is what will be served if "*" is present.

Comment 16

[Bjoern Hoehrmann]

The "default version" is typically a 406 error page. But well, if you insist that the UI should be less flexible and less extensible than in Opera, Amaya, Internet Explorer, and other browsers, so be it. Good it took you just 7 years
to make that decision.