[whatwg] Localized error messages

Olav Junker Kjær olav at olav.dk
Thu Nov 25 08:35:03 PST 2004


dolphinling wrote:
 > WRT the "ugly consequences", if this is aesthetic remember that the
 > error is coming from the UA, so it's not expected to mesh well with the
 > page. If it's not aesthetic I'm not sure what you mean.

No, I was thinking about the consistency of the language in the error 
description. If one field in a form uses build-in validation, and 
another uses custom validation, the two error messages would be in two 
different languages.

Consider the example error message in section 2.6:

 > The expected format is: a digit followed by three uppercase letters.
 > You cannot complete this form until the field is correct.

Imagine how this would look on a danish page with an english UA:

: Det forventede format er: et tal efterfulgt af the store bogstaver
: You cannot complete this form until the field is correct.

Thats what I call ugly :-)

 > Finally, if the page never says what language it is, how is the UA
 > supposed to know? That would be a large problem on the majority of 
the web.

You have a point there. But OTOH this would introduce a practical reason 
(as distinct from a "semantic" reason) to declare the language of pages, 
so maybe people would start doing it :-)

Olav Junker Kjær



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