Closed Bug 561534 Opened 14 years ago Closed 14 years ago

Nit: Quickfilter bar's tooltips should not end with a full stop (remove final dot that tooltips have)

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Search, defect)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Search
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
VERIFIED FIXED

People

(Reporter: thomas8, Unassigned)

References

Details

Just a nit, quite virtually about dotting the i's, but we shouldn't sneak in UI inconsistencies when introducing new features, as we'll give a bad template to both addon and core developers... 

STR

1 look at normal tb tooltips (e.g. get mail, write, etc)
2 look at quick filter bar's tooltips (e.g. unread, starred etc)

Actual results

1 normal tooltips look like this:
"Get new messages", "Create a new message" etc. (no concluding dots)
2 quickfilter bar's tooltips look like this:
"Show only unread messages.", "Show only starred messages.", etc., and "Toggle the quick filter bar." (don't forget that one when you fix this)

Expected results

2 quickfilter bar's tooltips should look like any other tooltip, i.e. they should not pretend they are full sentences that end with a dot:
"Show only unread messages", "Show only starred messages", and "Toggle the quick filter bar" (don't forget that one when you fix this)

2b While we're at it, let's improve this one:
"Toggle the quick filter bar" -> "Toggle quickfilter bar" 
- quickfilter should be one word, for easier recognition and uniqueness (or not?)
- having "the" in "toggle *the* quick filter bar" sounds clumsy to me, and it's not needed (or is it?)

Rationale:

Grammatically, EN-tooltips are infinitives (or perhaps imperatives). Either way, having a concluding full stop is grammatically inadequate. Besides, it just adds visual clutter that the user needs to parse, and makes tooltips feel more heavy (full-fledged sentence instead of concise description). Therefore, TB has never had full stops at the end of tooltips. We shouldn't introduce bad templates with new features.
Blocks: filterbar
Version: 3.0 → Trunk
Since we're in string freeze: perhaps the dots could be removed without changing string ID's in 3.1, and the ID's changed separately for post-3.1?
We definitely would not change the string id's.  I'm not sure we would ever want to change them for this; I would think localizers would generally decide whether they want periods on their tooltips anyways?
The rule of thumb is that even such small changes affect string id's. Though if it's so strongly undesired, a posting to newsgroup and subscribing sipaq here would do.
Note: I forgot to add "maybe" in the last sentence of my previous comment.
I pushed a minor fix that does not change the id's to drop the periods for consistency.  Thank you for raising the issue.

Changes involving s/quick filter/quickfilter/ need to be a different bug and would require clarkbw signing off.
One more thing: I think the questionmark is also unneeded here:
<!ENTITY quickFilterBar.sticky.tooltip
         "Keep filters applied when switching folders?">
(In reply to comment #3)
> The rule of thumb is that even such small changes affect string id's. Though if
> it's so strongly undesired, a posting to newsgroup and subscribing sipaq here
> would do.

I'll post to the newsgroup about the change.  Since our last late-l10n just happened only a few minutes before this, it hopefully should not be a major disruption for those who care.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 14 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
(In reply to comment #6)
> One more thing: I think the questionmark is also unneeded here:
> <!ENTITY quickFilterBar.sticky.tooltip
>          "Keep filters applied when switching folders?">

It made some sense!  But I agree.

for this one:
http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/0da62903252e

for my previous one:
http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/39695cfa8c14
Thank you! :)
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
(In reply to comment #2)
> We definitely would not change the string id's.  I'm not sure we would ever
> want to change them for this; I would think localizers would generally decide
> whether they want periods on their tooltips anyways?

Exactly, it's my responsibility/decision to choose whether there should be a period or not. Every localizer should have a guideline for the punctuation in his/her lang and should follow it, no matter what punctuation en-us strings are using.
Wow! I'd think that's the quickest fix I've ever witnessed, thanks everyone for their cooperation. That's genuine Thunderbird team spirit!

(In reply to comment #10)
> Exactly, it's my responsibility/decision to choose whether there should be a
> period or not. Every localizer should have a guideline for the punctuation in
> his/her lang and should follow it, no matter what punctuation en-us strings are
> using.

Vlado, you maybe right here in general. But I think it's important that en-us sets the right model / template
a) for the nature of the string itself (so that localizers know the en-us intention is to have an infinitive and not a full sentence)
So punctuation in en-us (or the lack thereof) will provide important information to localizers about the nature of the string.
b) for the consistency of strings within TB (so that localizers know the tooltip for "Show only unread messages" has the same structure as the tooltip for "Get new messages", and there's no intention to make them different).
Having some tooltips with and some without punctuation in en-us will send confusing signals to localizers about the nature of the string, and result in inconsistent sets of strings in localized versions.
Depends on: 561556
(In reply to comment #5)
> Changes involving s/quick filter/quickfilter/ need to be a different bug and
> would require clarkbw signing off.

Bug 561556  - Decide on unique name for new quick filter bar (proposal: "QuickFilter bar") and fix tooltip strings etc. accordingly

Bryan, we'd need your feedback on that :)
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