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Interlanguage list should be rendered according to context language (user interface language)
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Description

Screenshot of current git master as deployed on commons.wikimedia.org (1.20wmf5)

Recently the rendering of the interlanguage list was changed from:

  • Sentence case rendering of the language name in the origin language (e.g. in an English interface French would be rendered as "Francais").

To:

  • loose word rendering of the language name in the origin language (e.g. in French the language name is usually written lowercase in a sentence, so it is rendered as "francais" (lower case) regardless of context/user interface language).

I think the ideal solution is to render it like this:

  • Sentence case rendering of the language name in the user interface language (e.g. French would be rendered as "French" for an English user, regardless of the content language, and Dutch as "Dutch". And for a Dutch user it would read "Frans" and "Nederland". And for a French user interface it would read "francais" and "néerlandais" (lower case).

But since right now we don't all language names in all language, I recommend we revert this recent change to the status quo until we can go all the way. Because right now the interlanguage list looks (imho) very broken to the average user (e.g. written by someone not caring about grammer, inconsistent capitalization). See attachment.


See also:

  • bug 36819

Version: 1.20.x
Severity: enhancement

Attached:

Screen_Shot_2012-06-18_at_6.55.32_AM.png (410×187 px, 21 KB)

Details

Reference
bz37703

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Medium.Nov 22 2014, 12:21 AM
bzimport set Reference to bz37703.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

Changed this into an enhancement bug. Filed the recommended quick fix for the sidebars caused by bug 36819 as bug 37705.

The reason for the current situation with links in the language of the target is of course to facilitate people in 'finding their way back' to their own language wiki. Ideally, we would have the following:

If user has a preference language set in his global settings (for instance Dutch), all interlanguage links in all wiki's should be in Dutch for this user.

If user has set a specific override language on a wiki (for instance Dutch), all interlanguage links in this specific wiki should be in Dutch for this user.

If a user is logged in on nl.wikipedia.org but has not language preference set, all interlanguage links should be in Dutch (if option 1 is implemented). (or possibly the language the browser is advertising ?)

If a user is not logged in, or if there is no global language option yet, then the 'current' method should be used, where all interlanguage links are in the language of the target wiki's interface language.

AND add an index with sentence case per language and on the interlanguage table always apply the sentence case rules of the 'host' language and not the language that is 'embedded' into the rest of the interface.

(In reply to comment #2)

The reason for the current situation with links in the language of the target
is of course to facilitate people in 'finding their way back' to their own
language wiki. Ideally, we would have the following:

If user has a preference language set in his global settings (for instance
Dutch), all interlanguage links in all wiki's should be in Dutch for this user.

If user has set a specific override language on a wiki (for instance Dutch),
all interlanguage links in this specific wiki should be in Dutch for this user.

If a user is logged in on nl.wikipedia.org but has not language preference set,
all interlanguage links should be in Dutch (if option 1 is implemented). (or
possibly the language the browser is advertising ?)

If a user is not logged in, or if there is no global language option yet, then
the 'current' method should be used, where all interlanguage links are in the
language of the target wiki's interface language.

All this just simply means "user language preference". Every User object (even anonymous ones) have preferences (default preferences). And if and when we implement global settings, that is something taken care of at the preferences level, not at the level of "get user language". And by default the user language is the content language (anonymous users / new users that haven't changed it).

The logic you describe is what I meant in my opening post. Your phrasing is more clear :)

I agree with Krinkle's reasoning. The jumbled case has since been restored to sentence case in the interlanguage links. However, Wikidata will re-introduce this issue.

The list of language links in http://wikidata-test-repo.wikimedia.de/wiki/Q321 is currently rendered purely in the native name and jumbled case, regardless of UI language. This decreases scannability and usefulness.

Krinkle writes that "we don't all language names in all languages". Shouldn't https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CLDR (which is deployed on the cluster) address this concern?

  • Bug 37542 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
  • Bug 37756 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I am unsure of the scope of this bug now. Can you please clarify what you'd like changed on https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1 for example? And is there anything else this bug covers now?

Krinkle / Erik: ^^ Can you answer Lydia's question please?

content hidden as private in Bugzilla

The endonym must be used and the casing was fixed long ago, nothing to do here AFAIK.

  • Bug 72423 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***