51154 - Inconsistency in the use of "." and ":"

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 55614

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, defect, P2)

Description

[Henrik Gemal]

There seems to be a lot of inconsistancy the the use of "." after sentences and 
command and the use of ":" before options.
Examples:
take the pref panel "Navigator":
"." after "clicking the Home button..."
no "." after "Always check when I drag..."
"." and not ":" after "Select the buttons that..."
etc....

Comment 1

[Henrik Gemal]

I'd like to provide diff files as long as someone tells me what the correct uses 
are...

Comment 2

[Blake Ross]

Henrik: please feel free to assign simple wording changes like this to me right 
when you file the bug.  It'll cut down on spam for the default component 
owners, and I'm likely to get around to it before Netscape's busy engineers do.

cc'ing vera, the tech-writing god*dess*, for punctuation clarification.

Comment 3

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

UI text should never contain a full stop, except when it is a self-contained 
sentence which is not associated with a particular control. Example: the 
explanation of cookies.

A colon should be used in the text which begins any list of checkboxes or radio 
buttons, where the text of the list items can sensibly be worded to end the 
sentence. Example: `When Mozilla is started, open: [/] Navigator [ ] Messenger
[ ] Composer [ ] Chatzilla'. (But still, the items themselves shouldn't end in a 
full stop.)

I can't tell what the first example is (Mozilla isn't working for me at the mo'), 
but the second example is ok; and as for the third, the label for the toolbar 
button tree should probably be `Show these items in Navigator toolbars:' .

Comment 4

[Henrik Gemal]

Perhaps we should first agree on the changes that need to de done for one page. 

Let's take the "Navigator" pref page:
1) do we need a ":" after "...display" in the title on the first titlebox?
2) no "." after each option, right?
3) Should "Home page" be "Home Page"?
4) should there be a "." after "...to this page"?
5) "." after "to the Home button"?
6) ":" after "...the list below", right?

Comment 5

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Suggested changes to the `Navigator' panel:

* When Navigator starts up, display --> When I open a new Navigator window:
* Blank page --> Leave the window _empty
* Home page --> Go to my _home page
* Last page visited --> Open the page I last _visited
* Home page --> Home Page
* Select the buttons that should be available from the list below. -->
  Show these buttons in my Navigator toolbars:

So the answers to Henrik's questions are (1) yes (it introduces a list), (2) 
right (list items shouldn't have full stops), (3) yes (it's a heading), (4) yes 
(it's explanatory text), (5) no (though that checkbox shouldn't be there anyway), 
and (6) no (it's explanatory text, but I suggest changing it to introductory text 
which should have a colon).

Blake, do you want to do the other panels here, or in a separate bug?

Comment 6

[Blake Ross]

Just gimme everything here

Comment 7

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Attachment: Corrected prefs UI text, part 1

Comment 8

[Blake Ross]

What? Dogfood...?  I don't think this is dogfood or nsbeta3, and since I'm 
99.9% sure it'll get minused for both causes, I'm removing the nominations.  
Don't worry, though, I'll get to this.

Comment 9

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Sorry Blake, that was just something Timeless and I arranged last night to test 
your sense of humor.

Comment 10

[Blake Ross]

<exhales>

...looks like I failed the test, though :(

uh, adding `polish' keyword so I can pretend like this spam is useful.

Comment 11

[verah (gone)]

Tasteless humor! The Nav triage team believed you too -- we thought you'd gone 
around the bend. Dogfood, indeed.

Comment 12

[Blake Ross]

Vera, please review all of matthew's proposed changes and ensure that they are 
OK.  I will try to get this in tonight, before UI text freeze, but Matt there 
will be no time for the rest of the fixes.

Comment 13

[verah (gone)]

Well, I have been closing my eyes and hoping that this one would go away, but it 
didn't. Here's the thing -- that preference dialog doesn't conform with our 
admittedly sketchy spec for UI text in preference dialogs. We tried to come up 
with something consistent, and implement it, but a number of things happened:

- Most people ignored our spec (we should have published it widely, but we 
instead worked directly with the people responsible for each pref)
- I didn't have time to bother and annoy people about this
- Many people want to make changes to the dialogs, and often their changes undo 
previous changes
- etc.

So here's what I'd do with this dialog, in a perfect world:
- Have a heading, not a sentence fragment, for the first section. So we'd have 
the heading "Opening a New Window," and the sentence fragment "When I open a new 
Navigator window:" would appear *inside* the group box, below the header and 
above the choices.

- Sort out our use of first and second person. Notice that Matthew is 
introducing first person in his changes (which I like). However, other pref 
dialogs make extensive use of second person ("Here is a list of pages you have 
previously visited.") We need to figure out who's talking here.

Having said that, I like all of Matthew's changes and vote that we take them. 
The Navigator pref dialog will be slightly closer to what I think is goodness, 
though the pref dialogs as a group will still be pretty inconsistent with one 
another. Sigh.

Notice that this bug is related to 52349. I like Matthew's change better than my 
own, so please close that one and do this one instead!

Comment 14

[Blake Ross]

I agree that the spec needed to be out in the open. If it was, this could have 
been done in a matter of days.

Text changes are very easy, so technically it's still possible to do *all* of 
that with a couple of .dtd checkins......

Comment 15

[verah (gone)]

Blake, we weren't trying to hide the spec -- it existed as an email circulated 
among three people, one of whom left the company, and it was never finished.

Comment 16

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Vera: Second person is for instructional text -- because it's the equivalent of 
the computer speaking to the user (e.g. `The Laundromat Manager can do your 
washing for you').

First person is for controls which the user interacts with (and for overarching 
labels for such controls, e.g. for radio buttons) -- because it's equivalent to 
the user speaking to the computer (e.g. `[/] Do my washing for me').

So `Here is a list of pages you have previously visited.' is ok in that sense, 
though it's probably not as useful as it could be.

Comment 17

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

Hope this gets fixed ASAP. It's very difficult to keep localizations updated 
when punctuation change all the time.

Comment 18

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Blake decided to file a new bug on this. Ours not to reason why ...


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 55614 ***

Comment 19

[Blake Ross]

sorry. i forgot about this bug.