Use shorter and more concise text for the "Format preferences for dates etc" tab label

Hi David,

Thanks for your report! I confess: I'm guilty. ;-) But it's not quite as long as you claimed, so I changed the title and description of this bug report.

I felt that the "for dates etc." clarification was motivated. OTOH, since there is an explanation right below the tab label, I agree that it's probably better to drop that part. Then we have "Regional Settings" vs. "Format preferences". I'd prefer to keep the word "format", to clearly distinguish that tab from "language", which is also a regional aspect. The overall label, covering both tabs, is "Language & Format".

Would "Format Settings" or "Format Preferences" be ok with you? If so, which one do you prefer?

P.S. Any comments on the shortened language list?

"Format preferences" I believe still sounds not descriptive enough. I understand what it means, but users will ask what "Format" is, as it is too general a term.

That's why I proposed "Regional settings", as it is a term perhaps more descriptive and already used at least in KDE and Windows. We should perhaps look at what other systems use (Fedora, Mac) to have more data.

Adding a translations task for people interested in translations to comment on this.

> P.S. Any comments on the shortened language list?

Let's not discuss multiple issues in an unrelated bug :-) See my comments on bug 693337.

Keep up the good work!

On 2011-01-30 13:50, David Planella wrote:
> "Format preferences" I believe still sounds not descriptive enough.
> ...
> That's why I proposed "Regional settings",

How about simply merging them into "Regional Formats"? :-) Neither
"preferences", "settings" nor "options" makes the label more descriptive
anyway.

I checked out Windows, and they have a window with the title "Regional
and Language Options". The tab underneath (screenshot attached), that is
most like the second tab in language-selector, is labeled "Formats". I
also noticed this page:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/What-can-I-do-with-regional-formats-and-languages

To me, "Regional Formats" would not be a compromise. I think it would be
better than my previous suggestions.

> Adding a translations task for people interested in translations to
> comment on this.

Excellent! So let's put this bug on hold for a couple of weeks, and see
what comes up.

@Gunnar Hjalmarsson
First of all, appreciating your effort. Besides, would you mind refer to the locale and regional setting from both kde4 and gnome3, both are using regional and locale settings. We have encountered with some issues related to it recently, maybe its time to refactoring language-selector, instead of working on the one doesn't works too well.

Some more additional info on how other projects and systems are dealing with this:

http://live.gnome.org/Design/SystemSettings/RegionAndLanguage
http://www.hadess.net/2011/01/region-panel.html

On 2011-01-31 13:40, ZhengPeng Hou wrote:
> @Gunnar Hjalmarsson
> First of all, appreciating your effort.

Thanks.

> Besides, would you mind refer to the locale and regional setting
> from both kde4 and gnome3, both are using regional and locale
> settings.

Not quite sure I understand what you mean by that. If you suggest that
we introduce the label "regional and locale settings", I for one
disagree. As I mentioned on another bug report, just like you I have
beginner level users in mind when thinking of the language-selector UI.
"Locale" is a rather hard to grasp computing term, so I don't think it
would be wise to use it in any of the UI labels.

> We have encountered with some issues related to it recently, maybe
> its time to refactoring language-selector, instead of working on the
> one doesn't works too well.

If you want to start a serious discussion about that, you'd better
approach the Ubuntu developers, e.g. on their mailing list. (I'm just a
volunteer with 6 months experience from using a GNU/Linux OS.)

This bug was fixed in the package language-selector - 0.13

---------------
language-selector (0.13) natty; urgency=low

  [ Gunnar Hjalmarsson ]
  * LanguageSelector/gtk/GtkLanguageSelector.py:
    - Ensure that main or origin country is included when country
      specific options for a language are shown (LP: #710148).
    - Do not let an absent translation directory make the program crash
      (LP: #714093).
  * data/LanguageSelector.ui:
    - Shorter label to describe the second tab (LP: #709855).
  * LanguageSelector/macros.py:
    - Use locale names with '.UTF-8' instead of '.utf8' when setting
      LC_* or LANG environment variables (LP: #666565, #700619).
      Thanks to Lauri Tirkkonen for the patch!
 -- Evan Dandrea <email address hidden> Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:13:04 +0000