1751584 - In a titlebar, name the site visited and "Firefox WEb Browser" should be separated by an emdash, not a hyphen (localizations don't follow en-US specification)

Status: NEW

(Mozilla Localizations :: de / German, defect, P5)

Description

[tomashnyk]

Attachment: Screenshot_20220122_214455.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/96.0.4664.137 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Words should be separated by emdashes, not hyphens (see attachment showing the difference between a window that does it (KDE) and Firefox)).

Hyphen is this: -
Em-dash is this: —

For the correct usage, see here: https://practicaltypography.com/hyphens-and-dashes.html

It would also be consistent with the solutino to this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=388506

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Widget: Gtk' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[tomashnyk]

Well, I do not have Windows and others on but I guess this would afflict most if not all platforms.

Comment 3

[Andre Klapper]

This ticket completely lacks steps to reproduce. We have no idea how and where to see what.
Or why you think that there is some bug in Firefox and not in...whatever is shown.

Comment 4

[Tom S. (please needinfo tschuster)]

Firefox switched to using emdash as a titlebar separator about a year ago with bug 1279647.

Comment 5

[Darkspirit]

At least the german translation contains a - instead of —:
https://pontoon.mozilla.org/de/firefox/browser/browser/browser.ftl/?search=data-content-title-default&string=210833

Comment 6

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

It's not mandatory for locales to follow en-US typographic rules (we got complains before for forcing this type of characters on all locales).

If this bug is about German, it should be moved to German and have localizers weight in.

Comment 7

[Darkspirit]

(In reply to tomashnyk from comment #0)
Which language does your Firefox have?

Comment 8

[tomashnyk]

My language is English.(In reply to Darkspirit from comment #7)

(In reply to tomashnyk from comment #0)
Which language does your Firefox have?

My language is set to English, but most other things are set to Czech.

Locale gives this:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=cs_CZ.UTF-8
LC_TIME=cs_CZ.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=cs_CZ.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=cs_CZ.UTF-8
LC_NAME=cs_CZ.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=cs_CZ.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=cs_CZ.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=cs_CZ.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=cs_CZ.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

I am using Firefox on KDE with Latte Dock with this applet: https://github.com/psifidotos/applet-window-title

My understanding is that Firefox supplies the string for the window title as one, i.e "Page title - Firefox Web Browser", not as two, ie. "Page title" and "Firefox Web Browser". If not, it would be an issue for that applet.

Here Libreoffice says that Firefox is doing this for them too: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=146638 (comment 2)

Comment 9

[Darkspirit]

cs also has - instead of — :https://pontoon.mozilla.org/cs/firefox/browser/browser/browser.ftl/?string=210833

Comment 10

[tomashnyk]

Czech should definitely have a dash. Czech standardly does not really differentiate the two and it probably should have an en-dash (I am a Czech antive speaker who meddles into typography a bit).

But this should be set by the LANG variable, no? All my interface is in English.

Comment 11

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

(In reply to tomashnyk from comment #10)

But this should be set by the LANG variable, no? All my interface is in English.

Not necessarily. What do you have in about:support, Internationalization settings (towards the end)?

Comment 12

[tomashnyk]

This:

Application Settings
Requested Locales ["en-US"]
Available Locales ["en-CA","en-GB","en-US"]
App Locales ["en-US","en-CA","en-GB"]
Regional Preferences ["en-US","en-CA","en-GB"]
Default Locale "en-US"
Operating System
System Locales ["en-US"]
Regional Preferences ["cs-CZ"]

Comment 13

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

OK, that tells that you're using en-US localization in Firefox (it's available, and it's "requested"), so I'm not sure why you'd be seeing the wrong dash.
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/search?q=%5E%5B%5E%23%5D.*%5Cs-%5Cs&path=.ftl&case=false&regexp=true
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/search?q=%5E%5B%5E%23%5D.*%5Cs-%5Cs&path=.ftl&case=false&regexp=true

I wonder if that comes from the OS somehow.

Comment 14

[Tom S. (please needinfo tschuster)]

Does default Firefox even use "Firefox Web Browser" in the toolbar? I think it's usually "Mozilla Firefox". So this might be a modified distribution build.

Comment 15

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

(In reply to Tom Schuster [:evilpie] from comment #14)

Does default Firefox even use "Firefox Web Browser" in the toolbar? I think it's usually "Mozilla Firefox". So this might be a modified distribution build.

Good point. No, we don't use any strings with "Web Browser".

But I've found this, from bug 1390071
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/taskcluster/docker/firefox-snap/firefox.desktop

There's no trace of compositing those strings, so that must live in Ubuntu (is this a snap package?)

Comment 16

[tomashnyk]

No, no snap, I removed all of those from my system. It is a distribution package as far as I know.

Comment 17

[h-h]

German should indeed use an en-dash instead of a hyphen.

• German Wikipedia uses an en-dash to separate article title and "Wikipedia": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beispiel
• German Google image search uses an en-dash to separate query text and product name "Google Suche": https://www.google.de/search?q=Beispiel&tbm=isch&hl=de
• Google Search generally (also for German) uses an em-dash (at least not a hyphen) to separate article dates and excerpts (they changed it from a hyphen some time ago): https://www.google.de/search?q=tornado+in+usa&hl=de

At most, it might be debatable whether German should use an em-dash instead of an en-dash, because German web browsers will regularly be used to display English pages which tend to use an em-dash as the longer dash variant (more consistency in same titlebar), and other software using longer dashes will also generally rather use an em-dash (but perhaps, THEY should adapt their localizations).

Comment 18

[h-h]

This article is important for localizers regarding the dash issue (https://blog.mozilla.org/l10n/2020/10/22/l10n-report-october-2020-edition/). It alledgedly lists "the full list of IDs, in case you want to search for them in Pontoon." However, some string IDs seem to be of a kind of summarizing type, because the list doesn't, e.g., contain "data-content-title-private". (I'm not familiar with Pontoon.) However, the article links a changeset, which should be expected to contain everything (https://hg.mozilla.org/l10n/gecko-strings/rev/d08740a62d59f882e148c732e04ebda9b847e8b9).

Comment 19

[h-h]

Another dash occurrence important for localizers that's not in the article: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=388506

Comment 20

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Another dash occurrence important for localizers that's not in the article: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=388506

This bug is 15 years old, and that string doesn't exist anymore.
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/locales/en-US/chrome/browser/downloads/downloads.properties#76-77

Please let's focus this bug to "why is en-US not showing an em-dash on Linux in that specific widget".

Comment 21

[h-h]

that string doesn't exist anymore.

Then you'd need to find the new name. Because it still exists in the interface. My German Firefox shows an em-dash in the downloads fly-out window as well as the window that appears when you click on a download there.

let's focus this bug to... en-US... Linux

Noted.

Comment 22

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to tomashnyk from comment #16)

No, no snap, I removed all of those from my system. It is a distribution package as far as I know.

Can you reproduce this with Firefox as provided by Mozilla? https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/linux/

Comment 23

[tomashnyk]

(In reply to Dão Gottwald [::dao] from comment #22)

(In reply to tomashnyk from comment #16)

No, no snap, I removed all of those from my system. It is a distribution package as far as I know.

Can you reproduce this with Firefox as provided by Mozilla? https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/linux/

Yes, it behaves the same. (I downloaded the tarball, untarred it and ran the "firefox" binary in it).

Comment 24

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

I still can't make sense of this. This is working as expected for me on Ubuntu, using an en-US build.
data-content-title-default is set here for en-US: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/e3a7a72713e1ba8696cb2af55e928059bc822572/browser/locales/en-US/browser/browser.ftl#19
... and it's used here: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/e3a7a72713e1ba8696cb2af55e928059bc822572/browser/base/content/tabbrowser.js#1051-1054

Comment 25

[Darkspirit]

The Snap is called "Firefox Web Browser".
If the Snap is installed (== it has placed a .desktop file and an icon in the right folders), the non-packaged official Firefox binary's name and icon is defined by the Snap's desktop file.

Comment 26

[Darkspirit]

(In reply to tomashnyk from comment #16)

No, no snap, I removed all of those from my system. It is a distribution package as far as I know.

Which distribution are you using? What's the download link to the distribution's firefox package?
That custom firefox package might be distributing the Snap's desktop and icon files.

Comment 27

[Darkspirit]

(In reply to tomashnyk from comment #0)
Please open about:support, click on "Copy text to clipboard" and paste it here. It might contain relevant distribution information (distribution id, environment variable).

Comment 28

[tomashnyk]

Attachment: about:support as requested

There are no snaps on my system. "locate firefox.desktop" yields nothing now (I uninstalled the distro version completely). I am using Kubuntu 21.10.

I am using this: https://github.com/psifidotos/applet-window-title to show the window title. Maybe it is a bug in there?

wmctrl -lx
gives me this:
0x06000074 0 Navigator.Firefox GreenOne Troubleshooting Information — Mozilla Firefox

Comment 29

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

(In reply to Andre Klapper from comment #3)

This ticket completely lacks steps to reproduce. We have no idea how and where to see what.
Or why you think that there is some bug in Firefox and not in...whatever is shown.

QA could help reproduce and confirm the bug, maybe even help log follow-up issues, but I don't understand what the step to reproduce are. Are we supposed to test en-US builds only? Which test pages should we take into consideration? Does this bug apply to other operating systems than Linux (on which it was originally reported)? Could you please clear out the confusion in order for QA to attempt confirmation?

Comment 30

[tomashnyk]

I cannot reproduce the bug anymore, I guess I would close it. It is well possible it was caused by me using this applet in KDE: https://github.com/psifidotos/applet-window-title

Comment 31

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

Considering the reporter's comment above, is this still something that should be addressed?
If not, it should be closed.
If yes, QA needs more appropriate steps to reproduce, if any.
Could you help, or redirect to someone who can help in this matter?

Comment 32

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

I think we're good for en-US, but we still seem to have a problem with German and potentially other locales. As a native German speaker I can confirm that the German language differentiates between - and – (endash). I actually learned this in school. Historically applications have used - because of ASCII, but nowadays there's no reason not to use – here. The even longer emdash would work too.

Comment 33

[h-h]

In comments #18 and #19, I linked resources for checking what's to edit.

For some time now, my German Firefox Developer Edition displays an en-dash in the title bar. However, when you search for the string "browser-main-window" in Pontoon, it shows 5 results: 2 with hyphens, 2 with en-dashes, 1 irrelevant. So, there's still something to be done, it seems.

Comment 34

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

Based on comment 32 and comment 33 above this bug is confirmed, however, detailed steps to reproduce are not offered so a detailed investigation can't be made. Please NeedInfo me if you need more test results (QA to test a specific set of test pages on specific build locales). Thank you!

Comment 35

[h-h]

I'm using Firefox Developer Edition 107.0b3 (64-Bit), locale "de" (German). I've configured the browser to display both the title bar and the menu bar.

In the browser UI, I can still find the following cases of dashes that should be en-dashes, but are either hyphens or em-dashes instead:

• Open a large image in a small enough browser window, so that the image is scaled down (help finding one: https://www.google.de/search?q=wallpaper&tbm=isch&hl=de&tbs=isz%3Al). The title bar of the browser window now shows something like "... (WEBP-Grafik, 2000 × 800 Pixel) - Skaliert (99%) – Firefox Developer Edition" with a hyphen and an en-dash.
• Visit http://example.com/, click menu item "Extras > Seiteninformationen". The appearing page information dialog uses a hyphen as separator in the window title.
• Visit https://cdpn.io/sdelaney/fullpage/wWdxPe and select one of the animated elements in the element inspector. In the accompanying data view where you initially see CSS rules applying to the element, go to the tab "Animationen". When you hover with your mouse cursor over the first diagram that has CSS selector text next to it, a tooltip appears. The first line in this tooltip ends with " - CSS-Animation", using a hyphen.
• Visit "about:downloads". Make sure you have a history of successful or aborted downloads there. The gray text of every list entry contains two em-dashes. Running downloads have one em-dash. (Running downloads can be checked with the files on https://speed.hetzner.de/.)

Comment 36

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

I managed to reproduce the first 2 situations in the comment above (the ones related to the title bar). The en-US locale build appears to display correctly, while the de locale build does not. These reported situations are quite random and different, but I imagine this bug will address the Title Bar ones and another bug would address the remaining ones. Please NeedInfo me for QA support. Furthermore, to reproduce this issue, the Title Bar needs to be activated from Fx's customization screen and it is reproducing on all major OSes. Thank you!

Comment 37

[h-h]

I imagine this bug will address the Title Bar ones and another bug would address the remaining ones.

If you mean this in a practical sense, I think changing all relevant spots in the German localization to en-dashes in one go would be best. The article https://blog.mozilla.org/l10n/2020/10/22/l10n-report-october-2020-edition/ contains important hints. One should additionally search for hyphens and em-dashes in the role of separators (surrounded by spaces).