Author Topic: Forum member's country flags  (Read 7227 times)

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Offline bsfeechannel

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #25 on: April 13, 2021, 08:57:10 pm »
If you don't believe me.

« Last Edit: April 13, 2021, 09:00:28 pm by bsfeechannel »
 
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Offline bsfeechannel

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #26 on: April 13, 2021, 09:28:26 pm »
On iOS, a long press on it opens the context menu for the image, with the hover text as the heading.

Same thing for Android.

 
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Offline Whales

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #27 on: April 13, 2021, 10:39:29 pm »
<img .....  alt='ca' title='Canada' ... >

A lot of browsers (unfortunately) make it difficult for users to find alt text.  On desktop: hovering your mouse over the image should work.  I guess it varies on mobile.

I did not know the 'title' attribute existed, nor that it seems to override the purpose of 'alt' when you hover over an image in desktop FF.  For example my flag (to the left of this post) may be either au or Australia or both (or neither!) depending on your browser.

Code: [Select]
<li class="gender">Country: <img src="https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Themes/default/images/flags/au.png" alt="au" title="Australia" data-pagespeed-url-hash="3774463967" onload="pagespeed.CriticalImages.checkImageForCriticality(this);"/></li>
« Last Edit: April 13, 2021, 10:41:37 pm by Whales »
 

Offline Bud

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #28 on: April 13, 2021, 11:28:36 pm »
If you don't believe me.



Wow! They could not make it look any smaller ?  |O
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Offline Nusa

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #29 on: April 14, 2021, 05:40:45 am »
I like the country flags for several reasons.

First of all, when I see an English speaking country, I can safely take the author's production as the gold standard of English. Conversely, for certain other countries, some caution, mixed with leniency, is called for.

Gold standard of English is hard to define. There's British English, American English, Australian English, New Zealand English, and various other native Englishes, all of which are not quite the same and have many local usages and turns of phrase. And then there's ESL English, which is actually the most international version. Meaning two ESL speakers often communicate better in English than two native English speakers from different countries. Which I find quite amusing, even though I understand why.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #30 on: April 14, 2021, 03:33:50 pm »
I like the country flags for several reasons.

First of all, when I see an English speaking country, I can safely take the author's production as the gold standard of English. Conversely, for certain other countries, some caution, mixed with leniency, is called for.

Gold standard of English is hard to define. There's British English, American English, Australian English, New Zealand English, and various other native Englishes, all of which are not quite the same and have many local usages and turns of phrase. And then there's ESL English, which is actually the most international version. Meaning two ESL speakers often communicate better in English than two native English speakers from different countries. Which I find quite amusing, even though I understand why.
That’s basically complete and utter nonsense.

The fact is, while spoken English does have a bit of variation that’s occasionally confusing to a speaker of another dialect, it’s overwhelmingly mutually intelligible. When it comes to written English, if you standardize for spelling traits (o vs ou in words like color, -ise vs -ize, and a handful of other words), it’s almost impossible to tell the nationality of a writer. It takes a very astute reader to notice the clues.

My qualifications on this matter: I studied linguistics; my mom is a retired ESL teacher; I’m American but have lived abroad for years, regularly communicating with Brits, Aussies, and the occasional kiwi or South African, as well as with many nonnative speakers, as well as observing nonnative speakers between each other; and I worked as a technical writer (in English, for an international audience) for years.

What is true is that sometimes, two nonnative speakers will have complete understanding of an utterance, whereas a native speaker will not, if the nonnatives happen share a common misuse of English which happens to collide with native English. For example, here in Switzerland, nonnative speakers will routinely use the word “manager” to mean “executive officer”. A native speaker will instead “misunderstand” them as meaning the English meaning of the word.

ESL teachers in Japan joke that “the only people who can understand a Japanese ESL student’s English are other Japanese ESL students”. :P

So while nonnative <-> nonnative can occasionally outperform nonnative <-> native speaker communication, it will practically never exceed native <-> native speaker communication.

If the native speakers speak two very distinct dialects, one can of course run into trouble, but nonnative speakers will have just as much trouble if it differs a lot from the dialect they learned.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2021, 03:36:02 pm by tooki »
 
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Offline tooki

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #31 on: April 14, 2021, 03:35:12 pm »
Nope, it does not. (Samsung tablet with Android, iPone 5 with iOS)

It does too. iPad with iOS and Samsung phone with Android. Using Chrome on both, of course. Seek and ye shall find.
And here’s what it looks like with Safari on iPhone:
 
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Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #32 on: April 14, 2021, 03:43:18 pm »
From what I can see, among non-professional linguists, the gold standard of English is whatever dialect the person speaking uses.  With a variety of different rationalizations.  History, number of speakers, official blessing or whatever.  It all makes a great theological argument, a lot like the number of angels on the head of a pin. 

I just feel fortunate that my native tongue is so widely spoken and understood.  Between English and my two less developed languages I can communicate with probably half of the worlds population.  And can probably find someone to communicate with almost wherever I am in the world.   I am too old to add Chinese to bump that number up by a big amount.
 
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Online Gyro

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #33 on: April 14, 2021, 04:12:33 pm »
Let's just cut the linguistics 'noise' (polite word) and concentrate on the basics...

It is useful to know what country a member is currently in so that advice can be relevant to their location - sourcing items, mains related stuff, physical environmental factors etc.

Hopefully nobody seriously gives a stuff about a member's ethnicity, country of birth, or background. It is purely a practical thing!
« Last Edit: April 14, 2021, 04:18:01 pm by Gyro »
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Offline gnuarm

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #34 on: April 14, 2021, 10:09:19 pm »
I don't get what all the hoopla is about.  The Heisenberg uncertainty principle limits how accurately your location can be known anyway.  Well, if you want to know velocity at the same time. 

In reality both my location and my velocity are changing at a regular rate anyway.  So it can't be terribly important to know it at any particular moment.
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Offline magic

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #35 on: April 15, 2021, 07:06:38 am »
Let's just cut the linguistics 'noise' (polite word) and concentrate on the basics...

It is useful to know what country a member is currently in so that advice can be relevant to their location - sourcing items, mains related stuff, physical environmental factors etc.

Hopefully nobody seriously gives a stuff about a member's ethnicity, country of birth, or background. It is purely a practical thing!
Why, there surely is more to it than just sourcing components. You could replace this post with just your flag and in the context of this thread it would read almost the same to me :D
 

Offline StillTrying

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #36 on: May 16, 2021, 02:13:36 pm »
Good luck picking me out from the approx 200K other potential Ian.M's out there without 'three letter agency' scale resources to correlate the data.

I always assume I know your name, but that's just a guess from the wild blueyonder, so I might not. :)
.  That took much longer than I thought it would.
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #37 on: May 16, 2021, 02:35:04 pm »
Now this forum supports Unicode, why still use images of flags? The good thing about text is it can be zoomed and scaled, without distortion and pixelation.
🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #38 on: May 16, 2021, 02:46:17 pm »
Shouldn't that be UK? It has the saltire for St. Patrick.
 

Offline magic

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #39 on: May 16, 2021, 05:49:30 pm »
Now this forum supports Unicode, why still use images of flags? The good thing about text is it can be zoomed and scaled, without distortion and pixelation.
Maybe because with increasingly nonsense addition to the standard, font designers are proportionally reluctant to bother implementing it in full :P

Can't wait for every Pokemon to get its own glyph ::)

Use SVG images if you must.
 
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Online Zero999

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #40 on: May 16, 2021, 10:27:10 pm »
Now this forum supports Unicode, why still use images of flags? The good thing about text is it can be zoomed and scaled, without distortion and pixelation.
Maybe because with increasingly nonsense addition to the standard, font designers are proportionally reluctant to bother implementing it in full :P

Can't wait for every Pokemon to get its own glyph ::)

Use SVG images if you must.

That's odd. It works for me. What operating system and browser are you using?
 

Offline tkamiya

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #41 on: May 17, 2021, 03:46:02 am »
It really doesn't matter to me that much.  But if I have to have an opinion, I'd prefer LOCATION.  I really don't care what country someone represent, born in, or have an affiliation to....  I just want to know, if I suggest a vendor for parts, for example, it's relevant to the OP.

As to Japanese English only understandable to Japanese English speakers...  I disagree.  I was born in Japan and lived there for 17 some odd years.  I'm now in US and has been for 30+ years.  I cannot understand spoken English by many Japanese folks.  My girlfriend is a retired English teacher and is a US born American.  She agrees many foreign English speakers speak better English than many Americans.  But when it comes to idioms, native speakers have the lead.  And languages do not translate 1 to 1.  For example, myself included, Japanese English speakers have problem with articles, a, an, the because it doesn't exist in their native language.  I have yet to see a concise and correct definition of when and how they can be properly used.

By the way....  English taught in Japan is a mixture of British and American English.  Teachers explain "do you have" is an equivalent of "have you."  I used to speak with slight Australian accent because I learned English by speaking to Australian hams.  I found out really quickly, a word "bank" is spoken so differently that I had to modify my speech.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2021, 03:48:22 am by tkamiya »
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #42 on: May 17, 2021, 10:17:46 am »
Now this forum supports Unicode, why still use images of flags? The good thing about text is it can be zoomed and scaled, without distortion and pixelation.
Maybe because with increasingly nonsense addition to the standard, font designers are proportionally reluctant to bother implementing it in full :P

Can't wait for every Pokemon to get its own glyph ::)

Use SVG images if you must.
I've just tried it on the Winwoes 10 machine at work and I see the letters GB in different sizes, which is a little better.
GBGBGBGBGBGBGBGBGBGBGB

Given that Unicode support is patchy across platforms: how is one supposed to know what glyphs are widely supported? I hope that the important Greek letters and symbols such as  μ, Ω, π , Δ, ° etc. used in electronics widely supported, otherwise we might as well stick with plain old ASCII. :palm:
« Last Edit: May 17, 2021, 12:17:11 pm by Zero999 »
 

Offline harerod

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #43 on: May 17, 2021, 12:34:33 pm »
[quote author=tkamiya
...
For example, myself included, Japanese English speakers have problem with articles, a, an, the because it doesn't exist in their native language.  I have yet to see a concise and correct definition of when and how they can be properly used.
...


Have a problem... *scnr*
ところで、日本語を大好きだよ。
よろしく、ドイツから。
 

Offline magic

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #44 on: May 17, 2021, 03:05:27 pm »
I've just tried it on the Winwoes 10 machine at work and I see the letters GB in different sizes, which is a little better.

Given that Unicode support is patchy across platforms: how is one supposed to know what glyphs are widely supported? I hope that the important Greek letters and symbols such as  μ, Ω, π , Δ, ° etc. used in electronics widely supported, otherwise we might as well stick with plain old ASCII. :palm:
Now you are becoming enlightened :D

I think it depends not only on OS but also on the font in use, though I may be wrong (special handling by the font renderer or whatever) and of course every desktop/mobile OS these days ships with its own default font(s) so for many users it's one and the same. I take the pragmatic approach and assume that everything that is actually useful (Latin/Greek and derivatives, most Asian runes, etc) is likely to be supported, less useful stuff (Egyptian hieroglyphs) is unlikely to be included in most fonts and silly gimmicks (emoticons, flags, pokemon) are likely to be supported by gimmicky software like the latest version of iOS.

I use Greek letters a lot and no one has ever called me out.

The country extension is utterly :palm: because you are supposed to write a country code in two English letters in some weird encoding (not the basic ASCII part), which may or may not optionally be rendered specially by software which knows the country's flag. It fails on all the original goals of Unicode, which were to reduce software bloat, provide consistent rendering of content text :rant: across platforms and enable people to use computers in their native language.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2021, 03:17:59 pm by magic »
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #45 on: May 17, 2021, 03:36:15 pm »
I've just tried it on the Winwoes 10 machine at work and I see the letters GB in different sizes, which is a little better.

Given that Unicode support is patchy across platforms: how is one supposed to know what glyphs are widely supported? I hope that the important Greek letters and symbols such as  μ, Ω, π , Δ, ° etc. used in electronics widely supported, otherwise we might as well stick with plain old ASCII. :palm:
Now you are becoming enlightened :D

I think it depends not only on OS but also on the font in use, though I may be wrong (special handling by the font renderer or whatever) and of course every desktop/mobile OS these days ships with its own default font(s) so for many users it's one and the same. I take the pragmatic approach and assume that everything that is actually useful (Latin/Greek and derivatives, most Asian runes, etc) is likely to be supported, less useful stuff (Egyptian hieroglyphs) is unlikely to be included in most fonts and silly gimmicks (emoticons, flags, pokemon) are likely to be supported by gimmicky software like the latest version of iOS.

I use Greek letters a lot and no one has ever called me out.

The country extension is utterly :palm: because you are supposed to write a country code in two English letters in some weird encoding (not the basic ASCII part), which may or may not optionally be rendered specially by software which knows the country's flag. It fails on all the original goals of Unicode, which were to reduce software bloat, provide consistent rendering of content text :rant: across platforms and enable people to use computers in their native language.
I don't see the problem with having flags, but things such a dumb emojis are a big pile of crap. 💩. Wow, Winwoes really is shit. It supports the useless turd emoji, over country flags which actually have some use.  💩💩💩
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #46 on: May 17, 2021, 04:01:28 pm »
I've just tried it on the Winwoes 10 machine at work and I see the letters GB in different sizes, which is a little better.

Given that Unicode support is patchy across platforms: how is one supposed to know what glyphs are widely supported? I hope that the important Greek letters and symbols such as  μ, Ω, π , Δ, ° etc. used in electronics widely supported, otherwise we might as well stick with plain old ASCII. :palm:
Now you are becoming enlightened :D

I think it depends not only on OS but also on the font in use, though I may be wrong (special handling by the font renderer or whatever) and of course every desktop/mobile OS these days ships with its own default font(s) so for many users it's one and the same. I take the pragmatic approach and assume that everything that is actually useful (Latin/Greek and derivatives, most Asian runes, etc) is likely to be supported, less useful stuff (Egyptian hieroglyphs) is unlikely to be included in most fonts and silly gimmicks (emoticons, flags, pokemon) are likely to be supported by gimmicky software like the latest version of iOS.

I use Greek letters a lot and no one has ever called me out.

The country extension is utterly :palm: because you are supposed to write a country code in two English letters in some weird encoding (not the basic ASCII part), which may or may not optionally be rendered specially by software which knows the country's flag. It fails on all the original goals of Unicode, which were to reduce software bloat, provide consistent rendering of content text :rant: across platforms and enable people to use computers in their native language.
I don't see the problem with having flags, but things such a dumb emojis are a big pile of crap. 💩. Wow, Winwoes really is shit. It supports the useless turd emoji, over country flags which actually have some use.  💩💩💩

I don't understand - how is this a Windows thing (or lack of)?
I'm perplexed at why any OS would go to the trouble of implementing useless parts of the Unicode standard, like turd emojis, whilst ignoring more useful things such as country flags. :palm:
 

Offline TimFox

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #47 on: May 17, 2021, 04:01:38 pm »
[quote author=tkamiya
...
For example, myself included, Japanese English speakers have problem with articles, a, an, the because it doesn't exist in their native language.  I have yet to see a concise and correct definition of when and how they can be properly used.
...


Have a problem... *scnr*
ところで、日本語を大好きだよ。
よろしく、ドイツから。

I first ran into this situation back in graduate school in the US, where a Japanese colleague would ask advice from us before submitting a technical paper for publication.  When we corrected his use of articles, he naturally asked us for the grammatical rules on article usage, and none of us could find them.  I then found that UK subjects would listen to "the rock music" and go "in hospital", while we Americans listen to "rock music" and go "in the hospital".  I believe that the Russian language also does not use articles.
 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #48 on: May 17, 2021, 04:10:50 pm »
I've just tried it on the Winwoes 10 machine at work and I see the letters GB in different sizes, which is a little better.

Given that Unicode support is patchy across platforms: how is one supposed to know what glyphs are widely supported? I hope that the important Greek letters and symbols such as  μ, Ω, π , Δ, ° etc. used in electronics widely supported, otherwise we might as well stick with plain old ASCII. :palm:
Now you are becoming enlightened :D

I think it depends not only on OS but also on the font in use, though I may be wrong (special handling by the font renderer or whatever) and of course every desktop/mobile OS these days ships with its own default font(s) so for many users it's one and the same. I take the pragmatic approach and assume that everything that is actually useful (Latin/Greek and derivatives, most Asian runes, etc) is likely to be supported, less useful stuff (Egyptian hieroglyphs) is unlikely to be included in most fonts and silly gimmicks (emoticons, flags, pokemon) are likely to be supported by gimmicky software like the latest version of iOS.

I use Greek letters a lot and no one has ever called me out.

The country extension is utterly :palm: because you are supposed to write a country code in two English letters in some weird encoding (not the basic ASCII part), which may or may not optionally be rendered specially by software which knows the country's flag. It fails on all the original goals of Unicode, which were to reduce software bloat, provide consistent rendering of content text :rant: across platforms and enable people to use computers in their native language.
I don't see the problem with having flags, but things such a dumb emojis are a big pile of crap. 💩. Wow, Winwoes really is shit. It supports the useless turd emoji, over country flags which actually have some use.  💩💩💩

I don't understand - how is this a Windows thing (or lack of)?
I'm perplexed at why any OS would go to the trouble of implementing useless parts of the Unicode standard, like turd emojis, whilst ignoring more useful things such as country flags. :palm:

Well, the two letter codes for flags aren't necessarily correct.

The Union Flag is not the flag of Great Britain (GB). It is the flag of the United Kingdom (UK). Is there a correct emoji for the flag of Great Britain (i.e., just the Cross of St. George and Saltire of St. Andrew)? If not, that's one good reason not to use emojis.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Great_Britain
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: Forum member's country flags
« Reply #49 on: May 17, 2021, 04:35:53 pm »
Given that Unicode support is patchy across platforms: how is one supposed to know what glyphs are widely supported?

Easy - don't assume, use what you really need. Simply because something is just technically possible and novel, doesn't mean you have to use it. Don't expect new features, especially unnecessary gimmicks to work.


Quote
I hope that the important Greek letters and symbols such as  μ, Ω, π , Δ, ° etc. used in electronics widely supported,

Indeed, let's hope that. I think it's fairly safe assumption they work 99.99% of the time because everybody have been using computers to produce the symbols in question since 1990's, they are not some unnecessary few-years-old gimmick like the flags.
 


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