Brion wrote:
Another possibility is simply to 'blacklist' known problem browsers by printing a notice/link to better browsers on the edit page warning that they may have problems, as we now have a warning on long pages that some browsers may have problems. (Though in that case we aren't checking specific browsers.)
Those types of messages are not at all welcoming. I get pretty pissed when I go to a website that informs me that I need to upgrade or change my browser. And I /really/ get annoyed when those websites make suggestions on which browser I should use. I already have a browser that I am very comfortable with thank-you-very-much. And yes I upgrade often. But many people don't because they either don't know how, have a dial-up account that can't handle more than a couple meg download or they have an outdated OS or computer equipment.
We shouldn't be telling those people that they have to upgrade to use Wikipedia if they can use Wikipedia just fine without UTF-8. The benefits simply do not seem to be at all compelling enough to justify the negatives (at least for en.wikipedia). But if you can figure out a way to have UTF-8 without the associated problems, then great.
--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
On Tuesday 18 November 2003 11:03, Daniel Mayer wrote:
Brion wrote:
Another possibility is simply to 'blacklist' known problem browsers by printing a notice/link to better browsers on the edit page warning that they may have problems, as we now have a warning on long pages that some browsers may have problems. (Though in that case we aren't checking specific browsers.)
Those types of messages are not at all welcoming. I get pretty pissed when I go to a website that informs me that I need to upgrade or change my browser. And I /really/ get annoyed when those websites make suggestions on which browser I should use. I already have a browser that I am very comfortable with thank-you-very-much. And yes I upgrade often. But many people don't because they either don't know how, have a dial-up account that can't handle more than a couple meg download or they have an outdated OS or computer equipment.
We shouldn't be telling those people that they have to upgrade to use Wikipedia if they can use Wikipedia just fine without UTF-8. The benefits simply do not seem to be at all compelling enough to justify the negatives (at least for en.wikipedia). But if you can figure out a way to have UTF-8 without the associated problems, then great.
The benefits of having non-ISO-8859-1 texts editable for everyone do not outweight the negatives of not having them editable for 2% of users?
Further, there are browsers that have problems when UTF-8 is NOT used. Konqueror, which I am using, for one: on ISO-8859-1 pages, all non-ISO-8859-1 characters typed in turn into question marks, so they have to be typed in as entities, and most interwiki links also don't work; and Brion's survey show that there are 3.5 times as much konqueror users as of all non-UTF-8 browsers combined.
This does not affect 2% of users, but 2% of sessions. Some people use more than one browser and will switch if need be. I suggest the switch to UTF-8 is done quickly, and that the support for the minority browsers is added later by someone who feels it is worth the effort. This somewhat peripheral issue should not impede development of the Wikipedia.
Russell
Daniel Mayer wrote:
Brion wrote:
Another possibility is simply to 'blacklist' known problem browsers by printing a notice/link to better browsers on the edit page warning that they may have problems, as we now have a warning on long pages that some browsers may have problems. (Though in that case we aren't checking specific browsers.)
Those types of messages are not at all welcoming. I get pretty pissed when I go to a website that informs me that I need to upgrade or change my browser. And I /really/ get annoyed when those websites make suggestions on which browser I should use. I already have a browser that I am very comfortable with thank-you-very-much. And yes I upgrade often. But many people don't because they either don't know how, have a dial-up account that can't handle more than a couple meg download or they have an outdated OS or computer equipment.
We shouldn't be telling those people that they have to upgrade to use Wikipedia if they can use Wikipedia just fine without UTF-8. The benefits simply do not seem to be at all compelling enough to justify the negatives (at least for en.wikipedia). But if you can figure out a way to have UTF-8 without the associated problems, then great.
--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Le Tue, 18 Nov 2003 05:03:33 -0500, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com a écrit:
We shouldn't be telling those people that they have to upgrade to use Wikipedia if they can use Wikipedia just fine without UTF-8. The benefits simply do not seem to be at all compelling enough to justify the negatives (at least for en.wikipedia). But if you can figure out a way to have UTF-8 without the associated problems, then great.
What about transcoding data from utf-8 to latin-1 whern a non utf-8 compliant browser is detected? This way, people with this kind of browser may not even notice they are editing text in latin-1 which will be transcoded to utf-8 when the page is saved.
Vincent
We shouldn't be telling those people that they have to upgrade to use Wikipedia if they can use Wikipedia just fine without UTF-8. The benefits simply do not seem to be at all compelling enough to justify the negatives (at least for en.wikipedia). But if you can figure out a way to have UTF-8 without the associated problems, then great.
I wholeheartdly agree. This is totally against Wikipedia's spirit to discriminate for using some browser and not some other (.
--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Nicolas 'Ryo' (as myself, not fr:embassador)
We shouldn't be telling those people that they have to upgrade to use Wikipedia if they can use Wikipedia just fine without UTF-8. The benefits simply do not seem to be at all compelling enough to justify the negatives (at least for en.wikipedia). But if you can figure out a way to have UTF-8 without the associated problems, then great.
I wholeheartdly agree. This is totally against Wikipedia's spirit to discriminate for using some browser and not some other.
--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Nicolas 'Ryo' (as myself, not fr:embassador)
"NW" == Nicolas Weeger nweeger@noos.fr writes:
NW> I wholeheartdly agree. This is totally against Wikipedia's NW> spirit to discriminate for using some browser and not some NW> other.
Wikipedia discriminates against people who don't have a browser at all. Or people who don't have an Internet connection. Or people who don't have a computer.
There's a baseline of standards and technologies that somebody has to have in order to read and edit Wikipedia. This change is just adding one more technology -- UTF-8, which is really useful -- to that list.
~ESP
P.S. Yeah, it has nothing to do with Wikitravel, just thought I'd jump in.
On Tuesday 18 November 2003 19:36, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
We shouldn't be telling those people that they have to upgrade to use Wikipedia if they can use Wikipedia just fine without UTF-8. The benefits simply do not seem to be at all compelling enough to justify the negatives (at least for en.wikipedia). But if you can figure out a way to have UTF-8 without the associated problems, then great.
I wholeheartdly agree. This is totally against Wikipedia's spirit to discriminate for using some browser and not some other.
What about browsers that don't work well when UTF-8 is not present?
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org