[JDEV] charsets (was: Protocol extension?)

[Anders Qvist]

On Thu, 29 Jul 1999 Lindsay.Marshall at newcastle.ac.uk wrote:

> > How do the client know the language of a message? "Normal" human usage
> > patterns would probably be to write most mesasges in their native
> > language and some in english. It seems to me that selecting language
> > on every other message will likely be too much of a hassle. Of course, it
> > would be possible for every user to enter preferred language in your
> > profile in the roster. Intelligent clients could guess that yuo write a
> > message to a person in his/her preferred language. That would reduce
> > the number of occasions of manual language selection, if not eliminate
> > it.
> 
> The client simply looks at the default locale and that will tell it the
> local default language. It could perhaps negotiate with the server to
> see if its default is the same so as to avoid sending it all the time.

I think you misunderstood me. Replying to existing messages is easy:
the client should assume that you're answering in the same language as
the sender had in his message. However, every time you send a new
message, it's kind of dangerous to assume any language. I myself is a
typical example. I will probably write about half the messages in
swedish and half in english. This would mean that if the client used
the locale or some default value, it would be wrong about half the
time, and I would have to fiddle with some pesky "select language"
{ drop down list | command line paramter } about half the time.
However, if the roster info contained the *user's* locale, my client
could guess on that and be right most of the time.

Come to think of it, this would help bots and the like too, in that
they could talk to people in their native language. It would
definitively be nice if the roster info included preferred language
and probably charset as well.

[snip]

> > All this is a client issue of course, and shouldn't bother the
> > protocol/DTD itself. Misuse is no reason not to do things right. Still
> > it will be an issue. Any suggestions?
> 
> It is *not* jut a client issue. The information has to be embedded
> into the protocol so needs to be in the DTD somewhere.

I was refering to the business of *selecting* language for a message.
The protocol in itself should definitively have the feature.

Anders "Quest" Qvist
NetGuide Scandinavia

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