Subject:
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Re: Local/native langauge forms of country names
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Wed, 30 Jun 1999 22:27:27 GMT
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Viewed:
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1080 times
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In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek <lar@voyager.net> writes:
> Todd Lehman wrote (after heavy snippage):
> > OK, one question -- what are you going to the /news/ page for? It's not
> > really "part of the system" -- it's just setup information, mostly. Hmm,
> > is there still something there that's not available elsewhere?
>
> It's the page that lets you easily get to the traffic page.
OK, you can get to the traffic page now pretty much from anywhere.
> To me it
> collects all the stuff together neatly. I remember that when last I used
> it, all the pictures on the right actually took me places.
I'll hafta take some new screenshots before making the pictures clickable
again.
> Why have this page if it's not a gateway to elsewhere? It used to be,
> and I liked it.
Its purpose (always has been) simply as the introduction-point to the
news-server subsystem. Not as a gateway or portal to other things, but as a
starter-information kind of page. It was never really meant to be used more
than once... In fact, initially, the pictures weren't even clickable --
they were just screenshots to show some of the stuff so that the page wasn't
so darn boring -- but then the clickable links on the images were added
later just for the heck of it, because it was quick and easy.
What that page should evolve towards, IMHO, is some sort of introduction/
tutorial to NNTP newsgrouping for newbies.
> > > This page:
> > > http://www.lugnet.com/loc/ is too hard to get to)
> >
> > Where do you typically (wish to) jump to it from?
>
> Why, loc groups or the sublists of same, of course.
So you want to jump to http://www.lugnet.com/loc/ from the loc groups? OK,
on all of the newer pages, you can always get back to that URL simply by
clicking on the link in the upper left that says "Local". For example, if
you are on the San Francisco page,
http://www.lugnet.com/loc/us/ca/sf/
then just click "Local" right beneath the LUGNET logo, and you're there.
> > The English versions of the names are listed in parentheses on the group
> > homepages (one click in) and also appear here:
> >
> > http://www.lugnet.com/sitemap.cgi?/loc/
> >
> > > Just list them both side by side or something.
> >
> > There isn't room, even with the small font.
>
> OK, on top of each other then, or only use one column or something.
The nav stuff on that page is already pushing the on-screen real-estate
nearly to the max. You're talking about expanding it another half to
three-quarters of an inch or more vertically. That would push the content
itself down off the screen (or nearly so) on some browsers. And just to
make a couple country names more immediately obvious in one particular
language...Is that worth it?
Here's how bad it looks:
http://www.lugnet.com/loc/poopoo.gif
The top one is how it looks now. The middle one is how it would look with a
data change -- adding English names in parenthesis. The bottom one is how
it could maybe look in the best case, with coding changes amounting in
additional nested HTML table gymnastics that would add another 1KB to the
page. Unfortunately, the HTML tables in the nav areas are already bigger
than they ideally ought to be for good browsing speeds on typical
connections.
In the middle picture, BTW, my browser window needs to be stretched way open
to 782 pixels wide in order for the table to function properly -- and then
it looks rather OK, acutally -- but pages can't require browser windows that
wide.
> > Additionally, although pairs such as
> >
> > Österreich (Austria)
> > Deutschland (Germany)
> > Ellás (Greece)
> > Nippon (Japan)
> > Magyarország (Hungary)
> > Zhong Guo (China)
> > Sverige (Sweden)
> >
> > would work very well next to one another (assuming there was room), other
> > pairs such as
> >
> > México (Mexico)
> > Perú (Peru)
> >
> > are ridiculously unhelpful. Where would you draw the line?
>
> if it differs by one letter (and I see u as different than ú) I would
> list both.
I agree, in order to be consistent, both "Perú" and "Peru" or "México" and
"Mexico" would have to be listed if that were done for other countries. But
that's precisely what makes it so silly in that case: it's utterly
unnecessary. It's a complete and total waste of screen space. The
bastardized English version of the name is utterly unhelpful toward catching
the meaning of the name (in those two cases). Where is the line drawn on
what's helpful and what's not?
> > If you didn't already know the local-language name of a country or city,
> > how realistically would you really consider clicking on it?
>
> Quite. Remember I travel a lot. It's pretty likely that I might be
> nosing around there trying to find the South Korea loc group to post in
> search of a fest, we just got contacted by a Korean company that wants
> to resell our product. So I may well want to go there. How can I find it
> if I need to know the local name? I am 0% likely to know that... it's
> Korean Air, after all, not Taehan-Min'Guk Air.
Welp, one way to find it is to click up the site map
http://www.lugnet.com/sitemap.cgi?/loc/
and hit Ctrl-F and type "Korea".
Another way is to move your mouse over each of the links and see which one
shows .loc.kr
Another way is to click all of the names that you don't recognize and see
what's behind each link, remembering the names in the process.
All of those are probably a bit more work than you want to do, but this
isn't a piece of cake to solve.
> I repeat, chauvinistically proud, english is the language of the net.
> Yes it's a bastard language. Deal. The Taehan-Min'Gukians know the
> english name of their country and won't have trouble finding it under
> Korea.
I think it would be insulting to use the English-language version only.
That's out of the question. No good. Site doesn't look international
enough that way.
Using both versions would be ideal, if it could be made to fit and not look
like doo-doo. Maybe two columns instead of four, I don't know.
Unless lots of people are really having trouble with the localized names
on the /loc/ page, I really have to consider this a non-issue. You're
extremely intelligent...can you not memorize the native-language country
names in about three and half minutes...?
--Todd
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Local/native langauge forms of country names
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| (...) I should back up a couple steps and explain the objectives of the /loc/ page. There are two at this stage: 1) For repeat visitors who know where they're going, it's a stepping stone from the root homepage to the individual town or country (...) (25 years ago, 30-Jun-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Local/native langauge forms of country names
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| Todd Lehman wrote (after heavy snippage): (...) It's the page that lets you easily get to the traffic page. To me it collects all the stuff together neatly. I remember that when last I used it, all the pictures on the right actually took me places. (...) (25 years ago, 30-Jun-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
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