Wrong language flag image

[pavel-rybnicek]

Version Information

• WordPress: 4.6.1
• MultilingualPress: 2.4.7

Steps to Reproduce

1. Setup site in Czech language with language switcher

What I Expected

The Czech flag to be displayed in Language Switcher(which is in cz.gif).

What Happened Instead

The other flag is displayed (cs.gif).

The cs.gif should contain the image, which is in cz.gif file.

I believe the en.gif is not good, too. It contains the flag of England, but I think it's not what most people expect to see - Great Britain or US flag would be better.

[tfrommen]

Hi there,

and thanks for this.

We will fix this in an upcoming release.

I believe the en.gif is not good, too. It contains the flag of England, but I think it's not what most people expect to see - Great Britain or US flag would be better.

True.
However, the greater problem is that languages don't have flags at all. Countries do.
That's why we (more than once) wanted to remove the flags altogether - but were asked not to. Too many people out there are using them.
That's why we also won't change the flag for English.

By the way, you can set a custom flag URL for every site. So in order to fix this right away, you can just edit the according site (/wp-admin/network/site-settings.php?id=42&extra=mlp-site-settings) and set the full URL of the current cz.gif image.

Best regards,
Thorsten

[pavel-rybnicek]

Hi Thorsten,

thanks for the hint - that's exactly what we did.

I just wrote a long text explaining the second part of the "http code" in Language manager would be better for determining the flag name, but found a few examples where it wouldn't work.

Finally I think there should be a special parameter in Language manager determining the flag name. I found several examples where the current result is just wrong now.

Pavel

[tfrommen]

Hi Pavel!

I just wrote a long text explaining the second part of the "http code" in Language manager would be better for determining the flag name, but found a few examples where it wouldn't work.

Yeah, like I said, flags are not for languages, they are for countries. So using the flag based on the region part in the HTTP code would still be using a flag for a language. If you have a country with multiple languages (e.g., Switzerland, Belgium), you would have multiple times the according flag.
The best thing would be to use no flags at all - but that's just one/my opinion. ;)

Finally I think there should be a special parameter in Language manager determining the flag name. I found several examples where the current result is just wrong now.

What exactly do you mean with this? Are there more flags wrong than just the Czech one?

[pavel-rybnicek]

Hi Thorsten,

yes, definitely. I think the languages with different first and second part are suspicious, especially languages of minorities. At the brief look:

rup-MK Aromanian - rup.gif doesn't exist at all, ru.gif is Russian flag. mk.gif looks like a good flag, as according to Wikipedia, Macedonia is the only state with official Aromanian languages (for Aromanian minority).

haw-US Hawaiian - ha.gif/haw.gif does not exist
cy-GB Welsh - cy.gif is flag of Cyprus.
sv-SE Swedish - sv.gif is not a Swedish flag.

Just a few examples randomly picked...

Pavel

[dboune]

en-US, en-GB - /src/assets/images/flags/en.gif -- This appears to be the flag for England
In both cases, the flag used appears to be selected for the language, not for the country.

Appropriate flags for en-US and en-GB do exist in the plugin. I set them manually, but it would be nice if the most sensible flag for the country was selected by default. At least, the following fits for my own usage.

en-US - /src/assets/images/flags/us.gif
en-GB - /src/assets/images/flags/gb.gif

Unfortunately flags are one of the preferred methods of site selection. I suppose in some cases some people might consider language only without any region/country, though I've yet to deal with that. I do have situations such as en-CA / fr-CA, where country is still the most appropriate indicator for the flag, and text labels are used to denote the specific language. I think this is because people are generally accustomed to a pattern of "Look for my country, then look for my language".

Another issue with using the english flag for en-US; most in the US aren't even familiar with that flag. I know.. but they are familiar with the flag of Great Britain. Anyway, not to complain, because we CAN set a specific flag as needed.

[pavel-rybnicek]

Another angle of view - I installed the plugin, looked at the result and seen - hell, even such a simple thing as flags doesn't work...
I think this just doesn't look good for new users.

[Lindstromer]

Any news on this topic? I was looking into making a issue on this regarding the Swedish flag but found this issue already open. Would be great to fix it, since it creates a lot of confusion.