On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 5:21 AM, Steve M. Robbins <steve@sumost.ca> wrote:

> This vote dates from May 2009. *Do you know what was ultimately
> decided?

I haven't heard anything more recently, I'd suggest contacting Fedora
if you want to find out.

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pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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>> I read through the links you provided. There was a cogent argument
>> against using flags to symbolize a language. I would accept that.
>> However, while I understand your argument about losing contributors,
>> I'm not completely convinced that using a flag chosen by country X to
>> represent country X is a bad idea.

bmc> Country codes are not assigned solely to countries. What flag do we use
bmc> to represent .pr? Or .je? .an? .cx? .tw?

generally speaking country codes can activate people as flags. For
example there are many countries which aren't recognition by other or
U.N.O, for ex england appropriation of islands or a few muslim
countries, etc Thereby the internet domain names must be banned

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On lun., 2010-02-15 at 12:03 -0800, Don Armstrong wrote:
> Flags are a poor representation of a particular language, and language
> selection is better handled using locales and content-negotiation
> anyway. [There are many examples where a country speaks many
> languages, and examples where multiple countries have the same
> language, but different dialects.]

But flags (as an image) /are/ a quick way to identify a locale. Sometime
they don't exactly overlap, thus the above problem, but they are still
useful. Maybe not in content-negotiation, but for example to switch
between locales easily, to switch keyboard mapping, to ask for some
content different from the current locales, etc.

Cheers,
--
Yves-Alexis

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 08:53:56AM +0100, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> On lun., 2010-02-15 at 12:03 -0800, Don Armstrong wrote:
> > Flags are a poor representation of a particular language, and language
> > selection is better handled using locales and content-negotiation
> > anyway. [There are many examples where a country speaks many
> > languages, and examples where multiple countries have the same
> > language, but different dialects.]
>
> But flags (as an image) /are/ a quick way to identify a locale. Sometime
> they don't exactly overlap, thus the above problem, but they are still
> useful. Maybe not in content-negotiation, but for example to switch
> between locales easily, to switch keyboard mapping, to ask for some
> content different from the current locales, etc.

And fwiw major software vendors have managed to overcome this trepidation
and include flag icons for such purposes.

I for one would love to get little flag icons back for displaying my
keyboard layouts, as it's visually much quicker/easier to identify than
looking for a two/three character piece of text on my task bar.


sean

Quoting Dmitry E. Oboukhov (unera@debian.org):

> PW> As an example of the practical effects of flags in the context of
> PW> Debian; a number of years ago we lost our kernel maintainer, partially
> PW> because KDE in Debian included a flag of a country the maintainer (and
> PW> his government) disapproved of. A team formed to replace him, but
> PW> losing contributors still sucks.
>
> Hgm..
> When I saw KDE (it was 1.xx version) it contained lang switcher which
> used flags as language indicator. What happened to it? How is this task
> resolved now?


Paul is slightly wrong in his example. We lost the kernel maintainer
because he was thinking that using a compromise in the iso-codes
package to have a common name for TW that is "Taiwan" and not the
official "Taiwan, Province of China" name....was offensive for him and
China "mainland" people (while having "Taiwan, Province of China"
only was offensive to citizens of the island that everybody in the
world names "Taiwan").

So, nothing to do with flags, indeed. But, besides the underlying
problem (that has no "good" solution), that example shows that
anything related to political geography is highly sensitive. And, for
this, Paul's example is correct.

Quoting Dmitry E. Oboukhov (unera@debian.org):
> There are many packages in debian contain flag images.


I think this whole thread answered....something that wasn't asked in
your question (is is good or bad to use flags). Flags *are* used,
whether we like it or not...or whether this is a good idea or not.

The fact is that flags *are* used in software to represent things
(countries, languages, keymaps...). They are used to represent
languages and, while I know this is a bad idea, I find it easier for
me to spot the German flag and then be sure to avoid clicking on that
icon if I want to continue understanding something or be qble to yrite
soöething on öz kezboqrd..:-)

So, Dmitry's proposal to have a good set of flags that could be
available for use (good or bad is the software's problem) seems to be
an interesting idea to me.

And, at the minimum, we could answer the technical question he's
asking..:-)

I don't have a very clear idea about the location for files. I only
have a good idea about the file name and the file contents and I would
recommend flags to be named either after the said
countries/territories ISO code....and that the content should be the
official flag used by the country/territory official
government/authority.

One can object with many counterexamples...There are many and most
have been mentioned in the thread:
- countries without clearly identified official authority and thus not
official "flag" (Somalia could come to mind)
- 'countries' that aren't widely recognized as countries in ISO-3166 but have a
flag (Kosovo is an example)
- territories listed in ISO-3166 but aren't countries per se and don't
have flags (various French territories, Antarctica....)
- and probably other neat things.

There are many such examples but, still, the 246 entries in ISO-3166
would be a good start and such a package could deal with the 200+
entries that aren't a problem at all (the "country" is recognized as a
country and a 'flag' is easy to define without debate|controversy) and
deal with corner cases one by one (by being very conservative and
aware of potential risks).

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 06:38:00PM +0100, Christian PERRIER wrote:
> Quoting Dmitry E. Oboukhov (unera@debian.org):
> > There are many packages in debian contain flag images.
>
>
> I think this whole thread answered....something that wasn't asked in
> your question (is is good or bad to use flags). Flags *are* used,
> whether we like it or not...or whether this is a good idea or not.
>
> The fact is that flags *are* used in software to represent things
> (countries, languages, keymaps...). They are used to represent
> languages and, while I know this is a bad idea, I find it easier for
> me to spot the German flag and then be sure to avoid clicking on that
> icon if I want to continue understanding something or be qble to yrite
> soöething on öz kezboqrd..:-)
>
> So, Dmitry's proposal to have a good set of flags that could be
> available for use (good or bad is the software's problem) seems to be
> an interesting idea to me.
>
> And, at the minimum, we could answer the technical question he's
> asking..:-)
>
> I don't have a very clear idea about the location for files. I only
> have a good idea about the file name and the file contents and I would
> recommend flags to be named either after the said
> countries/territories ISO code....and that the content should be the
> official flag used by the country/territory official
> government/authority.
(...)

On the other hand, one application will want 16x10 icons, another one
24x15, another one may have some effects applied on the flags to better
fit the UI design, etc.

So while applications amy be using flags already, are they really using
the same ones, and would they benefit from having only one source for
all flags ?

Mike


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MH> On the other hand, one application will want 16x10 icons, another one
MH> 24x15, another one may have some effects applied on the flags to better
MH> fit the UI design, etc.

May be the size must be included into path?

like
flags/countires/<package>/16x10/
flags/countires/<package>/24x15/

etc?

Is package name nessesary to be in path or not?


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On 17/02/2010 19:15, Mike Hommey wrote:
> On the other hand, one application will want 16x10 icons, another one
> 24x15, another one may have some effects applied on the flags to better
> fit the UI design, etc.
>
> So while applications amy be using flags already, are they really using
> the same ones, and would they benefit from having only one source for
> all flags ?
>
> Mike

Maybe SVG flags would address this issue ?

Also when it's not possible to choose between two flags, one could imagine
just providing an icon with the 2 or 3-letter country code in it, and no flag.

Jérémy


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On Wed, 2010-02-17 at 17:28 +0100, sean finney wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 08:53:56AM +0100, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> > On lun., 2010-02-15 at 12:03 -0800, Don Armstrong wrote:
> > > Flags are a poor representation of a particular language, and language
> > > selection is better handled using locales and content-negotiation
> > > anyway. [There are many examples where a country speaks many
> > > languages, and examples where multiple countries have the same
> > > language, but different dialects.]
> >
> > But flags (as an image) /are/ a quick way to identify a locale. Sometime
> > they don't exactly overlap, thus the above problem, but they are still
> > useful. Maybe not in content-negotiation, but for example to switch
> > between locales easily, to switch keyboard mapping, to ask for some
> > content different from the current locales, etc.
>
> And fwiw major software vendors have managed to overcome this trepidation
> and include flag icons for such purposes.

I would love to get some comments from:
- people leaving in a country with many official languages.
- people leaving in a country which official language is the same
to the one spoken in another language (or at least quite similar).

Think of Ireland and UK ; Canada and USA ; Canada and France ;
Spain and Argentina/Peru/Uruguay/Chile...

People from Belgium are really nice people, but they certainly don't
want to spend their life licking on one of the Dutch/French/German flag.

Using flag for language can be perceived as arrogant for those country
who use the same language as another [larger] country.

> I for one would love to get little flag icons back for displaying my
> keyboard layouts, as it's visually much quicker/easier to identify than
> looking for a two/three character piece of text on my task bar.

Keyboards seems to be quite country-specific (not completely though).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout




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