[Vorbis] Can't access www.xiph.org from Japan

[Ian Malone]

Ralph Giles wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 26, 2005 at 09:28:10AM +0100, Ian Malone wrote:
> 
>><begin RFC>
>>      Note: HTTP/1.1 servers are allowed to return responses which are
>>      not acceptable according to the accept headers sent in the
>>      request. In some cases, this may even be preferable to sending a
>>      406 response. User agents are encouraged to inspect the headers of
>>      an incoming response to determine if it is acceptable.
> 
> 
> Ok, so the fallback option is valid. The apache documentation doesn't
> say one way or the other, but we were using the default config.
> 

Happy to be of some help.

> 
>>I agree with Christopher Bouevthat making the warning more human
>>friendly would be worthwhile:
>>Sorry, the Xiph.org homepage is [only available in English/not available
>>in xxx] and your browser [does not list this as an acceptable option/
>>will not accept this option].  The English version is available at...
> 
> 
> Yes, and as you imply, to be really effective, this message should be
> localized to one of the UA's acceptable languages. That would make
> for the most effective activism for browser cleanup, I think.
> 

I'm actually a little surprised that's not the Apache default.  It
is a pretty big task, but at least there would then be a central
starting point.  (I implied rather than said because I feel a little
guilty sitting here and pointing out giant localisation tasks to
others)

> 
>>Finally I'd like to say I think the OP is being constructive, even if
>>Xiph does decide to retain the current behaviour.  This is something
>>which doesn't seem to have been considered deeply.
> 
> 
> I have thought about it quite a bit. It's true we don't have so much
> besides English at this point, but we'd like to have site translations,
> and adding support for this was part of the site redesign.

My apologies.  I should also say I like the new design, it looks much
cleaner and a bit more professional.  The goal of having localisation
work properly in future is worth the odd mishap.

> 
> Normally we're quite spiky about whose bug should be fixed, but in
> this case I agree with the OP's suggestion. The idea that 'english 
> should be in everyone's language list' is flawed: either Enlish has a 
> privileged position, or everyone has to add *all* languages to their 
> list, just at lower priorities, which isn't tenable. Returning 406 when 
> the browser asks for png or jpeg and all you have is a tiff is different 
> from returning an error instead of a page the user can see but may not 
> be able to read.
> 

I think I agree, but it's not even necessary to give English a special
position at the minute; if there's only one option and it's not
complete nonsense to serve it instead (as in tiff/png), then that makes
sense.  If there are alternatives (user only asks for ja, server has en
and es) or technical reasons (tiff/png) then 406 is meaningful.

<snip>

-- 
imalone