Re: [fwd] Re: [rt-devel] Language detection bug (from: [email protected])

At 03:10 PM 7/02/2003 -0900, Sean M. Burke wrote:
>Short story:
>If you have a lexicon for a language form whose tag is "xx-yy", of course 
>you're calling it xx_yy.pm.  But if there's not already a xx.pm, you 
>should make there be one, even if it consists of just "package 
>Whatever::xx; use base qw(Whatever::xx_yy); 1;".
>(Or of course you could just mv xx_yy.pm xx.pm.)

Following the reasoning from my earlier post, if xx-yy is available then 
it's also a candidate for matching 'xx' if that's all a client asks for. I 
understand the problem in choosing between xx-yy and xx-zz, and why the 
burden has been shifted onto the client programmer. Maybe it's worth 
spitting out a warning if xx-** is found without xx also being present? 
(This just makes the requirement more obvious.)

This, incidentally, is a specific version of the problem whereby the client 
doesn't send any Accept-Languages header. In this situation all languages 
are 'matches'. The same mechanism (if any) should probably resolve this 
situation: programmer has to make it explicit, warning if any language is 
present and there's no default.

>Incidentally, one that that Locale::Maketext does do, is the reverse: if a 
>user accepts en-ca, Locale::Maketext will say "OK, I can also just give 
>then en.pm".  That is, this accept list:
>Accept-Language: en-CA, es-MX
>is treated as if it were really:
>Accept-Language: en-CA, es-MX, en, es
>
>I suppose I could have easly made it instead work so it would instead read 
>it as:
>Accept-Language: en-CA, en, es-MX, es
>I'm not particularly attached to either way; I bet there's theoretical and 
>practical arguments both ways.  Does anyone have a preference?  It's all 
>negotiable.

This is arguably wrong. I understand why it's done, and admittedly there's 
nothing explicitly saying it's wrong in the RFC. However, the prefix-rule 
does appear to be one-way. In logic terms, the prefix rule appears to mean 
something like:
         xx -> xx-*

That is, xx implies that xx-* is acceptable. However, the reverse 
implication is not explicitly stated: xx-* does not imply that xx is 
acceptable.

  - Andrew