Re: [Ayatana-dev] The return of the ellipsis

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Ted Gould wrote on 20/08/11 05:10:
>...
> So it seems regularly about this time in the cycle we start getting
> bugs about "..." in our code instead of "…".  Seems that they always
> creep back in, and that's very annoying.  How do we keep bugs out?
> Through testing!
> 
> I've created a small test[1] to test for the presence of "..." at the
> end of user visible strings in the code, and to fail if it finds any.
> The test is cleverly called "test-ellipsis" and it uses the POT file
> from gettext to look at all the user visible strings (since all user
> visible strings are translatable).

Awesome! I remember discussing something similar with Neil Patel after
UDS Maverick.

> I'm writing so that people know a bit about it when it fails, but also
> to ask if there's anything else that I should add with a similar
> methodology before I replicate this snippet across Ayatana projects.
>...

Space before an ellipsis at the end of a string.

    Wrong: "Sound Settings …"
    Right: "Sound Settings…"

Ascii apostrophe.

    Wrong: "In the clock's menu, show:"
    Right: "In the clock’s menu, show:"

Ascii quote mark.

    Wrong: 'Are you sure you want to delete "%s" and all its settings?'
    Right: 'Are you sure you want to delete “%s” and all its settings?'

Backtick.

    Wrong: "Authentication is needed to run `%s` as the super user"
    Right: "Authentication is needed to run ”%s” as the super user"
    (ignoring, for the moment, the other problems with that string)

"System policy prevents".

    Wrong: "System policy prevents querying keyboard settings."
    Right: "To access keyboard settings, you need to authenticate."

    Wrong: "System policy prevents formatting this device."
    Right: "To format this device, you need to authenticate."

Others are more context-sensitive, and therefore harder to scan for:

Period at the end of a checkbox or radio button label.

    Wrong: "☑ Automatically shorten pasted URLs."
    Right: "☑ Automatically shorten pasted URLs"

"Always" at the start of a checkbox label.

    Wrong: "☑ Always show the tab bar"
    Right: "Show the tab bar: ◉ Always ○ When there’s more than one tab"

"Enable" at the start of a checkbox label.

    Wrong: "☑ Enable logging of conversations to disk"
    Right: "☑ Save chat logs"

"Don’t" at the start of a checkbox label.

    Wrong: "☑ Don’t attach connectors to text objects"
    Right: "☐ Attach connectors to text objects"

It would be super cool if this kind of automated interface design
testing could be applied to all graphical software shipped by default.

- -- 
mpt
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