1055343 - Implement a general solution to truncation

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: Gaia, defect)

Description

[Michael Bauer]

There's a general problem with truncations in the UI, both in the en-US source but especially in localizations. The UI localization guidelines (https://docs.google.com/document/d/16P56U6bSM1KVunkCG3WLmtH1cmhQf7YxT4mTPyWAnUw/edit?pli=1) aren't really much help because there is only so much a localizer can do to shorten a given string. If it is a single word translation, there may even be nothing the localizer can do as not all languages allow for abbreviations. Compare Bug 1054555 where any attempt at abbreviating 'Teachdaireachdan' (Messages) is fairly abortive:
> If I abbreviated Teachdaireachdan to Teachd. that would
> mean 'coming', if I abbreviated it to Teachdair. or Teachdaire. that would
> mean 'messenger' and I can't do Teachda. or Teachdaireac. because digraphs
> are inseperable in Gaelic i.e. I cannot break certain sequences such as ea,
> chd, ai etc etc.

In addition, the problem also affects the names of apps downloaded from Marketplace (for example on Flame 'QR Code Scanner' becomes 'QR Code Sca...'). Given the sheer size of the icons and the default font size, this looks seriously silly for end users.

Apparently there have been various suggestions made (http://htmlpad.org/spacing/) as to potential solutions.

An additional idea that spring to mind is setting locale-based font size ranges i.e. if a locale is known to require more space to allow a slightly smaller font sizes to be used across the OS.

Comment 3

[Michael Bauer]

Closing since B2G is dead