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Re: [RFR] Next installment in localechooser revamp



On Saturday 05 April 2008, Frans Pop wrote:
> The patch is functionally finished, but I am planning to do a few
> additional cleanups before committing.
> Because of the added strings I'm not yet sure whether to commit before or
> after Beta2. Doing it before has the advantage that the whole revamp gets
> included in the same release.

The changes are now ready. The only reason I have not committed yet is that 
Christian does not like the template I added for continent selection, so 
I'm taking that to the list first.

With my patches, the different dialogs look as follows.

------ Language selection ------
   Please choose the language used for the installation process. This
   language will be the default language for the final system.

   Choose a language:

------ Country shortlists ------
   Based on your language, you are probably located in one of these
   countries or regions.

   Choose a country, territory or area:

------ Continent selection (new strings) ------
   The continent or region in which the desired country is located.

   Choose a continent or region:

------ Country selection (after selecting a continent) ------
   Choose a country, territory or area:


Christian's problem with the "The continent or ..." string is that in his 
opinion it's not a proper sentence. I disagree.
He proposed to change the long description to:
   Please choose the continent or region in which the desired country
   is located.

IMO that's really ugly as it means users are twice asked to choose 
something: first in the long description and then again in the short 
description. The fact that we already have that ugliness in the language 
selection template is no excuse to repeat it here (and it would be worse 
here because the long description is shorter which makes the repetition 
more obvious).

Christian also suggested changing the short description to just "Continent 
or region:" to avoid the repetition, but as you can see that would make the 
continent template completely inconsistent with the other templates.

Lintian does print warnings about the localechooser templates for using 
imperative form. Maybe we should remove "Choose a" from _all_ short 
descriptions in localechooser, and adjust the long descriptions 
accordingly. However, I feel that doing that at this point in the release 
cycle would be a really bad idea.

So, my conclusion is that my proposed strings are, though maybe not perfect, 
at least a whole lot better than Christian's suggestions and will do fine 
for Lenny.

I'm open to alternative suggestions, but they will at least have to show:
- exactly why it is that my string is so wrong;
- offer a solution that does not involve ugly repetitions or introduce
  additional work for translators.

Cheers,
FJP

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