478605 - Rename "Offline" tab and "Syncing" pane labels to "Synchronization" for IMAP accounts

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[rsx11m]

This is a follow-up to bug 410597 comment #32:
> [...] I'd actually like to remove the word "offline" as it's pretty confusing 
> in terms of offline/online.  In most areas we moved to "sync" as the wording
> for what was "offline".

While bug 436615 renamed various labels, including the "Syncing & Disk Space" pane, there are still occurrences of old phrases in the Account Manager and the Folder Properties (those are identical for Thunderbird and SeaMonkey):

> /mail/locales/en-US/chrome/messenger/am-offline.dtd
> 
>     * line 2 -- <!ENTITY doNotDownload.label "To save disk space, do not download for offline use:">
>     * line 3 -- <!ENTITY allFoldersOffline.label "Keep messages for this account on this computer">
>     * line 4 -- <!ENTITY allFoldersOffline.accesskey "o">
>     * line 5 -- <!ENTITY offlineNotDownload.label "Messages larger than">
>     * line 6 -- <!ENTITY offlineNotDownload.accesskey "M">
>     * line 29 -- <!ENTITY offlineSelectNntp.label "Select newsgroups for offline use…">
>     * line 30 -- <!ENTITY offlineSelectNntp.accesskey "S">
>     * line 31 -- <!ENTITY offlineImapAdvancedOffline.label "Advanced…">
>     * line 32 -- <!ENTITY offlineImapAdvancedOffline.accesskey "A">

> /mail/locales/en-US/chrome/messenger/folderProps.dtd
> 
>     * line 71 -- <!ENTITY folderOfflineTab.label "Offline">
>     * line 75 -- <!ENTITY offlineFolder.check.label "Select this folder for offline use">
>     * line 76 -- <!ENTITY offlineFolder.check.accesskey "S">
>     * line 77 -- <!ENTITY offlineFolder.button.label "Download Now">
>     * line 78 -- <!ENTITY offlineFolder.button.accesskey "D">
>     * line 80 -- <!ENTITY selectofflineNewsgroup.check.label "Select this newsgroup for offline use">
>     * line 81 -- <!ENTITY selectofflineNewsgroup.check.accesskey "o">
>     * line 82 -- <!ENTITY offlineNewsgroup.button.label "Download Now">
>     * line 83 -- <!ENTITY offlineNewsgroup.button.accesskey "D">

It appears doNotDownload.label is used for several types, so "offline" should refer here to something more like "locally". For news, offlineSelectNntp.label may be accurately stating "offline". In the Folder Properties dialog, the IMAP tab still reads "Offline" (folderOfflineTab.label) and should be changed to "Syncing", offlineFolder.check.label is referring to "offline use" as well.

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Whatever we do, please don't use "Syncing" everywhere, I believe it was used for the account manager as something short. However it doesn't map well to other languages, and IMHO we should be trying to find a better word.

Comment 2

[rsx11m]

I'm certainly flexible here. This bug is mainly meant to point out the current inconsistencies in the labels, some of which have been changed, others not.
I see your point that "Syncing" is an artificial version of the rather long "Synchronization", so this bug could be morphed to "replace offline and syncing with something better" instead. As a minimum, I'd suggest changing the tab name in the Folder Properties to match the label in the Account Manager.

Comment 3

[rsx11m]

I'm willing to take this myself as long as there is some feedback to which extent "offline" should be replaced, or if it's just about the labels for the Folder Properties tab.

Looking at http://mxr.mozilla.org/l10n-mozilla1.9.1/search?string=syncing it appears that many localizations opted for a form corresponding to the long "Synchronization" (as far as I can tell). Thus far, I didn't get any idea for alternative labels, something like "Local Mirroring" would be accurate but rather technical, equally long, and not intuitive either.

Comment 4

[rsx11m]

Attachment: Mockups for alternative labels

I've done some comparisons for the main labels "Syncing & Disk Space" in the Account Manager and "Offline" in the Folder Properties dialog. Under the assumption that (a) the word "offline" should only be used in a context where it is obvious that it refers to synchronization of an IMAP folder, and (b) that "Syncing" is not optimal and should be replaced if possible, these two locations appear to be the most important ones. The first snapshot shows the current status quo for both labels, followed by alternative labels underneath.

In the Account Manager, replacing "Syncing" with the (correct but long) full "Synchronization" reaches close to the boundary of the pane list on the left, but doesn't exceed it. So, that would be feasible. On the other hand, as stated in bug 410597, the term "Disk" doesn't really apply here in the context of an IMAP folder and its local copies, as any retention policy equally applies to both remote server and offline copies on the local disk. Thus, removing "Disk" would yield "Synchronization & Space" instead, or alternative "Synchronization & Storage", either of which would fit visually well.

For the Folder Properties, I've tried to replace "Offline" with both "Syncing" and "Synchronization", all of which fit well in en-US without exceeding the dialog width (and, as stated in the previous comment, the equivalent of "Synchronization" is used in many locales already anyway). Thus, if the Account Manager goes with "Synchronization & /something/" the Folder Properties could and probably should have a "Synchronization" label as well.

The pictures show the Shredder default theme on Windows XP, I've also tested this with SeaMonkey and on Linux with similar results (actually, a bit more space in the Folder Properties dialog).

Opinions, please. I assume this has to be decided before the beta 3 freeze?

Comment 5

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

nice work on the different examples, this really makes it easy to understand.

The "Synchronization & Storage" makes the most sense to me.  The "Space" only seems to work when it's part of "Disk Space", otherwise it makes me think more of "Outer Space".

Comment 6

[rsx11m]

Ok, thus the proposed Account Manager changes are in prefs.properties:

>-prefPanel-syncing-and-diskspace=Syncing & Disk Space
>+prefPanel-synchronization=Synchronization & Storage

and for the Folder Properties in folderProps.dtd:

>-<!ENTITY folderOfflineTab.label                  "Offline">
>+<!ENTITY folderSynchronizationTab.label          "Synchronization">

along with the respective changes in the backend.

Unless there are objections, I'll use the same labels for SeaMonkey as well.

Comment 7

[rsx11m]

Attachment: [checked in] Proposed patch

This implements the new strings as proposed in comment #6. While the changes are almost trivial, several variable and entity names had to be subsequently adjusted at various locations to match the new labels.

I have shortened the main label "prefPanel-syncing-and-diskspace" to just "prefPanel-synchronization", also to make it consistent with the other '&' labels (e.g., "Copies & Folders" is just "prefPanel-copies").

There is an RDF variable kNC_PageTitleOfflineAndDiskSpace which I renamed to kNC_PageTitleSynchronization as well. Note that respective changes were not made in bug 436615, and it's not obvious from the discussion there if this was omitted on purpose. While I couldn't figure out where it is actually used, the change doesn't seem to have any negative consequences on an existing profile.

Comment 8

[[e-mail]]

Comment on attachment 369658 [details] [diff] [review]
[checked in] Proposed patch

I don't think that part of the account manager data source has been used since the account manager had its de-RDF.

Comment 9

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> (From update of attachment 369658 [details] [diff] [review])
> I don't think that part of the account manager data source has been used since
> the account manager had its de-RDF.

Looking at: http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/search?string=PageTitle&find=%2Fmail&findi=&filter=^[^\0]*%24&hitlimit=&tree=comm-central

PageTitleFakeAccount is the only part that is still used (in mailnews/), mainly SM only, but maybe one Account Manager use as well.

I suggest that until we remove the data source or the PageTitle parts of it, we need to keep the items in sync so that extensions don't get confused.

Comment 10

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Comment on attachment 369658 [details] [diff] [review]
[checked in] Proposed patch

Thanks for the patch, r=Standard8.

I've checked this in: http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/437f5c240a12

Its not clear to me if you intend to do more work in this bug, so I've left it open - please mark fixed if appropriate.

Comment 11

[rsx11m]

Thanks for the reviews and checking in the patch.

From my point of view I would consider this done, unless Bryan has further IMAP-related labels in mind that may be ambiguous. There are still "offline" labels left, but those are secondary and should be unambiguous as they appear within the scope of the main "Synchronization" labels.

I'll leave this open for a few days and would close as fixed if no further comments on other labels come in.

Comment 12

[rsx11m]

No suggestions were made for more label changes, guess this can be closed then.
->FIXED