About this Website

This website is the creation of Andrew Gray. It is hosted by HostAssured in Florida. It is run on a Linux system using the Apache webserver. Amongst a wide number of features supported by the server this site makes use of Content Negotiation to automatically provide some content in multiple human languages.

Multi-Language support

When you request a page that is available in multiple languages your browser negotiates with the web server to provide the most suitable language for you.

Your browser can be configured to accept any, one, or several languages. In the case of several each has a priority assigned to it. Thus, if your native language is French, but you can also understand English and German you might configure your browser to accept all three languages with French in top place. When you request a page with both English and French versions your browser will automatically show you the French version. All modern browsers support this feature, but it is neither widely understood nor used. You should note that your browser will only accept pages in one of your choosen languages. If none are available you may see an error...

If a page is not available in any of your "acceptable" languages you may see an error along the lines of ;
      Error 406 - No acceptable variant
This error means that the server was unable to give your browser the requested document in any of your preferred languages. The message is generally followed by a list of 'variants' that are available. Webmasters may wish to check out the documentation for the Apache 2 directive ForceLanguagePriority.

Over 90% of web pages on line today are written in English. Thus it is generally a good idea to ensure that English ( code 'en' ) is on your list of acceptable languages, albeit possibly below a number of others.

It is also possible to remove all language preferences from your browser. In this case, when you visit a multi-lingual site you will see the default language as defined by the creators of that site.

This particular website holds pages in English(en), Italian(it), Flemish(nl), Thai(th), French(fr), German(de), Italian(it), Turkish(tr), and Spanish(es). These are fully supported on the Great Circle Calculator page.

If your browser tells our server that it cannot accept any of the available languages variants for a page you will be automatically shown the English version, with a note attached. This is achieved through the use of a custom error handler which traps the Error 406;

Note: Your browser requested this document in a language that we do not support. This is the English version instead.

If you see this note I would encourage you to add English to the bottom of you list of supported languages - you will find this site faster to navigate and likely find other websites less problematic.

Configuring a web server to support multiple languages is covered in Apache - Multiple Languages.