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Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

geyer.dev

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Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#31

Post by crazygringo »

tobr wrote: post #10

Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.

But as long as languages don't have any symbol, and symbols help with recognition, is it maybe just a lesser of evils?

It's clear that English originates from the UK and Portuguese originates from Portugal. Not to mention that sites often do have country variants -- the Brazilian Portuguese gets the Brazilian flag. And if a site is only for US and Mexican customers, a US flag makes sense rather than UK because it'll also use US currency.

And a flag icon also helps your eye quickly find the localization drop-down mixed in with a bunch of other stuff in the footer.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#32

Post by IshKebab »

david_allison wrote: post #25
tobr wrote: post #10

Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.

https://www.flagsarenotlanguages.com/blog/why-flags-do-not-r...

Doesn't really make a great case. I obviously recognise both the union jack and American flag as "English", and nobody would expect it to mean Welsh. Also there are approximately no people that speak Welsh and not English.

It's one of those "yes technically you're right, but actually it still works really well in practice so sod off" things. It's like saying tomatoes should be in the fruit aisle. No thanks. Sometimes utility is more important than anal correctness.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#33

Post by IshKebab »

int_19h wrote: post #13
jey wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not too far from the truth -- most mapping services render political boundaries differently based on where you're accessing the site from.

Or just refuse to commit. E.g. Google Maps, to this day, will not show the country for any Crimean city when you click on it to bring up its info panel. If you do this with e.g. Kherson, you get "Kherson, Kherson Oblast, Ukraine". But if you do it with Sevastopol, you only get the city name, not the region & country. It also shows dotted borders between Crimea and both Russia and Ukraine.

Well... that kind of makes sense no? What do you think it should say?

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#34

Post by harrall »

Y_Y wrote: post #17
tobr wrote: post #10

Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.

But flags almost sometimes map roughly to languages within my limited experience! For example there's only one kind of English and it belongs to the USA. Also Spanish, that must be USA too, even if some unimportant countries speak it. Brazil can have Portuguese because I don't know where Angola is. The Indian flag can represent Hindi, but also the 22 scheduled languages, but not the other official language because I…

We had a good budget for localization at my previous place and had like 10 Englishes and some countries had both their local language and English as options.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#35

Post by mschuster91 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #27
B-Con wrote: post #4

Presumably this is a big company problem of playing politics safely: They didn't want to take a position on the N country disputes out there by deciding which country code gets which flag and furthermore don't want to acknowledge which country politics are even disputed and so don't support the rest.

> They didn't want to take a position on the N country disputes out there by deciding which country code gets which flag Why not simply collect all the prevalent "stances" on the disputed topics, and give the user to choose on each stance individually (or for a better user experience: create some presets of "stances that often occur together", which the user can use to activate multiple stances at once).

Some of the target countries have laws on the books with teeth regarding their individual disputes.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#36

Post by Alex-Programs »

tobr wrote: post #10

Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.

I develop a language learning tool that uses flags for languages extensively.

I know that they have flaws. The problem is, there isn't any better pictorial representation, and they work well enough that it's better than not having one.

For some languages they work very well (e.g. Swedish), for others there may technically be ambiguity but it's clear enough (e.g. the Union Jack for English), and some are more difficult and rely on convention (e.g. the Egyptian flag for Arabic).

The landing page (https://nuenki.app) has a cloud of flags of the supported languages. It's an information dense, easy to scan way of seeing whether your language is supported. Sure, it's not technically 100% accurate, but what's the alternative?

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#37

Post by bdhcuidbebe »

Alex-Programs wrote: post #36
tobr wrote: post #10

Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.

I develop a language learning tool that uses flags for languages extensively. I know that they have flaws. The problem is, there isn't any better pictorial representation, and they work well enough that it's better than not having one. For some languages they work very well (e.g. Swedish), for others there may technically be ambiguity but it's clear enough (e.g. the Union Jack for English), and some are more difficul…

Flags for languages dont even work with one of the largest countries, India. They have about 20 official languages that var greatly.

Then of course the multitude of languages spoken in many european languages such as Spain (catalan, gallician, basque). Or the latin american variation.

Or what about Switzerland who dont have their own language (they speak french, german, italian and romanch).

Even your example of Sweden is naive, as we have Swedish, Finnish, Sapmi, Meänkieli and I would argue Älvdalska is another proper language too, even if it dont have official status.

Its a very flawed idea and no matter how pretty it may look, it cant map to reality and is just misleading at best.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#38

Post by [deleted] »

hunter2_ wrote: post #7

> My approach was to draw an American flag emoji and then look at the pixels to see if any of them contained a non-grayscale color. This works because the Windows fallback emoji is just black/white text This is the kind of thing that works great for a while, and then an OS update flips the table on how RGB subpixel antialiasing works for the subset of your users with a certain type of display, leading to a false posi…

[deleted]

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#39

Post by DiggyJohnson »

scrollaway wrote: post #28
tobr wrote: post #10

Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.

One of my favourite newly discovered YouTubers, K Klein, talks a lot about language. What sold me to subscribe to his channel is this absolutely wonderful bit with flags at 4:30: https://youtu.be/iQNdkdqoIdw?t=4m29s Flags aren’t languages. Listen to your elders.

Short of web standardization, how should a language picker be designed for a website where presumably the main design goal is a non-default-language speaking user can pick out their language?
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