[17125] in Athena Bugs
Re: Netscape 4.61 vs. 4.x language problem.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (t. belton)
Wed Sep 1 13:50:33 1999
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 13:50:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
To: Mike Barker <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Cc: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>, bug-infoagents@MIT.EDU, sarac@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <4.1.19990901125516.0253c960@po11.mit.edu>
Message-Id: <Pine.GSO.3.96L.990901133559.24125A-100000@iphigenia.mit.edu>
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Okay. First off, 'netscape-fix' is set to Do The Right Thing (that is,
special-case and parse the line) as of about five minutes ago. That'll
propagate tonight as usual.
Here's the entire story.
1. Most people have NO setting of any kind for languages in their
preferences.js. That is, there is no user_prefs("intl.accept_languages"
...) line in that file. If that's the case, netscape-fix will not add one.
Netscape-fix normally only changes/affects settings for which there is a
global default (in the global copy of preferences.js). Everything else we
leave alone.
2. If there is NO setting for languages, as described above, Netscape
assumes English ... the user sees a list containing English in their
Preferences dialogs ... and all is well.
3. If the setting is present but blank
user_prefs("intl.accept_languages", "");
- which the user can either do by altering preferences.js, or by Deleting
his/her entire list using the dialog - Netscape will make no assumptions
about language; the list will remain blank; and what happens when Netscape
communicates with a multi-lingual web server is PROBABLY left to the
defaults of that server. Netscape clearly considers this a non-fatal
condition but the docs have no info on what will actually happen.
4. If netscape-fix sees an intl.accept_languages line in the user's
preferences in the old format, it will convert the settings to the new
format. This allows the user to keep their choices without running the
risk of a Netscape crash.
That is to say:
user_prefs("intl.accept_languages","Japanese [ja],English [en]");
will become
user_prefs("intl.accept_languages","ja,en");
Okay? So all's well. No settings will be lost, and nobody will get
something unexpected.
-Todd
