875938 - Fix French pretty dates in notifications

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: fr / French, defect)

Description

[Théo Chevalier]

Attachment: l10n tmp patch for fr

Since Bug 862193 landed, the space allowed for pretty date in notification has been reduced.
In French, minutes-ago-short[zero] = à l’instant
does not fit anymore in notifications.

We are about to replace it with "il y a 1m" (1m ago), see attached patch.

But, "1m" is really bad in French, we read it "1 meter", not 1 minute.

We want to use "il y a 1min", but we need more space! 12 characters would be okay for us.
Do you think you could increase the space (or allow it dynamically or per-locale?)
AFAIK, a lot of locales are in the same case.

Comment 1

[Fabien Cazenave [:kaze]]

(In reply to Théo Chevalier [:tchevalier] from comment #0)
> But, "1m" is really bad in French, we read it "1 meter", not 1 minute.

I couldn’t agree more, but that’s the UX spec — at least for English, see bug 814355.
I proposed to use the prime sign (’), I still think it’d be suitable for non-English locales (e.g. « il y a 1’ ») but I’m neither a localizer nor a UX engineer.

Would that be OK for you Théo?

Comment 2

[Théo Chevalier]

Hm. So for French we have to choose between 1 meter (il y a 1m) and 1 minute of angle (il y a 1’) for notifications.

None of them are right nor, AFAICT, used in French software l10n (not only Mozilla). I really don’t know what to choose.
Note that if we use prime (’) for minute, we will still use (s) for second, across the OS. I don’t know if we have mixed use case for both. That could be weird.

Jean-Bernard, Benoit, what do you prefer?

Comment 3

[Fabien Cazenave [:kaze]]

(In reply to Théo Chevalier [:tchevalier] from comment #2)
> Note that if we use prime (’) for minute, we will still use (s) for second,
> across the OS. I don’t know if we have mixed use case for both. That could
> be weird.

For consistency we could use the double prime (”) for seconds — that would be technically correct AFAIK, but I don’t know if that would be self-explanatory for all users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_%28symbol%29#Designation_of_units

However, this is not a real problem because these short time descriptions (« il y a {{m}}min ») are only used for “pretty dates”:
 • no unit mixing there — it’s *either* minutes, hours, days…
 • we don’t use “seconds” for pretty dates — and I don’t think it’d make any sense.

Comment 4

[Jean-Bernard Marcon]

(In reply to Fabien Cazenave [:kaze] from comment #3)
> (In reply to Théo Chevalier [:tchevalier] from comment #2)
> > Note that if we use prime (’) for minute, we will still use (s) for second,
> > across the OS. I don’t know if we have mixed use case for both. That could
> > be weird.
> 
> For consistency we could use the double prime (”) for seconds — that would
I would say the prime char is making sense and can be recognized as "minute" by the user because its context ("il y a") will not suggest an angular measure.


> be technically correct AFAIK, but I don’t know if that would be
> self-explanatory for all users.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_%28symbol%29#Designation_of_units
> 
> However, this is not a real problem because these short time descriptions («
> il y a {{m}}min ») are only used for “pretty dates”:
>  • no unit mixing there — it’s *either* minutes, hours, days…
>  • we don’t use “seconds” for pretty dates — and I don’t think it’d make any
> sense.

Comment 5

[Benoit]

Me I'd prefer to lose the "il y a" than the actual message. 

If we really can't get two more characters (why?), I'd settle with "1 min", which should be understandable enough in the context of a notification.

Note that Android uses the actual time like "15:30", but I don't think we have the option to choose that variable instead of a duration.

Comment 6

[Théo Chevalier]

Thanks for your feedback

Let's try what Benoit said, and see if someone complain about it :)

I also removed "il y a" for hours and days, to be consistent.

(See the bottom of this patch)
https://hg.mozilla.org/gaia-l10n/fr/rev/6023a4aa28d5