In the Language menu of Macecraft products (jv16 PowerTools, RegSupreme, RegSupreme Pro) the programmer at a certain moment has preceeded the language name by a flag symbol, but later on dropped that flags, rightly as far as I'm concerned.


The W3C Working Draft "Authoring Techniques for XHTML & HTML Internationalization: specifying the language of content 1.0" recommends in "Tehnique 16": Don't use flags to indicate languages:


"Flags represent countries, not languages. There are many countries that use the same language, and numerous countries that have more than one official language".

( http://www.w3.org/TR/i18n-html-tech-lang/#ri20040808.173208643 )


See also the article "Indicating language choice: flags, text, both, neither?"


So, I suggest the programmer not to bring back those flag icons preceeding the language name in the Language menu and even to drop them from the Languages subdirectory.

Good points -- I agree.

... and even to drop them from the Languages subdirectory.

However, the Language menu program logic will have to change a bit if the icon files are removed.


As it stands now in v 1.7.0.416, a language will not show in the drop-down list unless its .ico file is in the Languages folder with its .lng file.

I agree that flags indicate countries, not languages.


But I think graphical elements with text are better than text alone, if you see a familiar flag you can easily find your language from the list. From a text-only list it's much more difficult to spot your language.

jv16 wrote
I agree that flags indicate countries, not languages.


But I think graphical elements with text are better than text alone, if you see a familiar flag you can easily find your language from the list. From a text-only list it's much more difficult to spot your language.

I disagree ... it's not more difficult at all and after all maybe Stars and Stripes is not so representative for Great Britain (English) residents, nor the French flag for french speaking Canadian residents, nor the Netherlands flag for Dutch speaking Belgian residents (Flemish), and so on... There are plenty of examples.


"if you see a familiar flag you can easily find your language from the list..."


Look at the examples above: your statement could only be true if that flag concerns a country where only one language is spoken which is not a language of another country!


Besides, what's a "familiar" flag? Is a Portuguese flag representative or familiar for a Brasilian inhabitant, e.g.? It's quite possible that a Brasilian does not even know the flag of Portugal (see "Flag as a symbol of language - Stupidity or insult", by Jukka Korpela).


The CEN (1) Workshop Agreement European Culturally Specific ICT Requirements says:

The use of national flags to denote language, although convenient to implement, is another potential source of major irritation to the users, particularly for native speakers of the language outside the thus indicated country.

(1)European Committee for Standardization

OK, this will be changed for PT 2008