Dialog window "MuseScore: Edit Style"

• Nov 19, 2013 - 13:06

In the dialog window "MuseScore: Edit Style" I would like to have the same vertical distance between the spinner fields. Making it the same as the distance between field number 6 and 7, 7 and 8, and 8 and 9 would namely make the Swedish strings divided on two lines fit in front of the fields and all text would be readable.

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• Nov 19, 2013 - 14:07

What version of MuseScore?
As the upcoming 2.0 is not yet translated to Swedish (well, 22% of the strings are translated there), I assume you talk about 1.3. Could you check and make sure the issue is still valid with a current nightly build ?
And maybe we can talk you in to work on the Swedish Translation ;-)
See http://musescore.org/node/22982 for more details on that..
Which dialog exactly? menu: Style->General...? Which of it's sub-pages?
Can you show a picture?

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• Nov 19, 2013 - 15:08

Nightly builds can be used in parallel to 1.x.
I don't think there's a real need to have a linefeed in the translation, the dialog would adjust to the lenght. But not to the height...
The spin boxes are less wide in the nighlies, so give more room.

I don't think you need to await Nicolas' decision, sign up allows access directly (now, it didn't in the beginning)
Just checked: you are a member of the swedish translation Team.

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• Nov 19, 2013 - 17:05

dialog.png
(looks truncated on the right hand side here, but there's more room)

However: if you are translating, it'd be much better if you get yourself the latest nightly build, so you can check the translations.
No worries, this won't interfere with 1.3 in any form or shape

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dialog.png 37.85 KB

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• Nov 19, 2013 - 17:20

Also, I assume the specific look of dialogs depends on both OS and language. So just because it looks one way one one system doesn't mean it will look exactly the same on your system - not with regard to these specific details, anyhow. FWIW, even in 1.3 that particular dialog looks quite different (and better) on my system than in the image posted previously with the irregular spacing and truncated text. Might be an issue that only affects Windows XP (looks like that was where that screenshot was taken from?), and perhaps only affects languages that translate to multi-line strings. So you'll pretty much have to see for yourself if the issue is fixed for you by installing a nightly build - which again in does not interfere with 1.3 in any way whatsoever.

I'm guessing it will turn out that the bad appearance in 1.3 will turn out to have been due to a bug in Qt for Windows XP, and that since 2.0 uses a much more recent version of Qt, this may have been fixed - and doubtless replaced by other bugs that also only affect XP :-)

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• Nov 19, 2013 - 18:33

Thanks, JoJo. It not only looks truncated, it really is. The list field to the left in the window is also too narrow, truncating the word "Ornament". All the unused space to the right in the window doesn't look good. Then the spinners, just as in the 1.3 window, lack a space just in front of "mellanrum".

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• Nov 19, 2013 - 22:28

I'm not sure what truncating you are referring to it in your initial point - I thought JoJo simply meant he missed the right edge slightly when capturing the screen shot, but that it is really present on his system (as it is on mine). It is true that the pane on the left truncates the word "Ornaments" in the translated version , though. Looks correct in English, I guess because the English word "Articulation" is shorter than the translated version, and the size of the dialog is set based on that rather than dynamically adapting to the language. Not sure if there is a simple automated way to make that happen?

Seems to me the unused space in the dialog is kind of unavoidable - the same dialog supports multiple tabs, and some tabs just have more info than others, so the less full tabs will have lots of empty space. That's not to say better organization of that tab couldn't present the unused space more pleasingly. I imagine there are probably GUI design guidelines out there somewhere that might address this.

As for the space before "mellanrum", that's not necessary a bug if you consider that this isn't meant to be a word. In the English original, it's "sp", an abbreviation for "space", and meant as a unit of measurement, like "mm" for millimeter. In ordinary English, we often put a space between a number and the unit of measurement, but it's pretty common in GUI's to not do that. So "8sp" seems perfectly natural to me. Perhaps the issue is that the translation should come up with a similar abbreviation to look like a unit of measurement rather than a word. Or the GUI could be tweaked to add the space even in the original - "8 sp". Similar changes would be needed throughout the GUI.

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• Nov 20, 2013 - 07:38

The truncating of JoJo's screenshot happened in the embedded image; the attached image shows the whole window.

There should be a space between the number and the unit "mellanrum". "Mellanrum" is both a word and a unit and means "space" in this case. Even Wikipedia mentions that a space between a number and its unit is recommended: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_(punctuation)#Spaces_and_unit_symbols. This recommendation applies to Swedish and other languages as well.

I would recommend not to abbreviate "space".

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• Nov 21, 2013 - 07:28

Marc: "Could be a lot of work for little real benefit."

I think it is a very basic demand on a software product to have the writing in order, so if a project wants to make its software look bad and awkward then it should not correct such things. How many more places in MuseScore's GUI disrespect the space between number and unit?

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• Nov 21, 2013 - 16:00

It is you itch. Scratch it!
I don't have any problem with the "sp" or "mm" being appended to the digits without a space at all, it honestly doesn't bother me the least. I see that it looks strange in Swedish, using a whole word rather an abbreviation, but it's not my task to fix that, is it?
You can fix it in the translation, by using an abreviateion or ad a space or both, or by reporting it as a potential bug to the Qt folks. Or by reporting it to the MuseScore (core) developers!

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• Nov 21, 2013 - 15:47

I agree the writing needs to be in order, and actually there has been a lot of work lately cleaning up wording. My point, though, is that even while ordinary written language calls for spaces between numbers and units (just as it calls for use of complete sentences with periods at the end and a host of other things) the rules for GUI design are often different (as they are for the use of sentences with ending punctuation - this is almost never appropriate in a GUI). So it's much harder to make any sort of objective case display of units in dialog boxes needs to provide that space. Look at other software programs and you'll see it done both ways. LibreOffice does it like MuseScore - no space between number and unit in spin boxes et al. Scribus adds the space. Other programs like Thunderbird sidestep the issue by putting only the number in the box, leaving the units after the controls. That's actually my preferred approach, FWIW.

As for how many other places in MUseScore do not choose to add the optional space between the number and the unit, the answer is, "all of them" as far as I can see. It's consistent throughout the UI. Apparently that's because the "suffix" property is used consistently. And while I'm no Qt guru, I'd say that not adding a space before a suffix is *not* a bug in Qt. Suffixes don't normally have leading spaces. The issue here is that "sp" is not a "suffix" in any traditional sense - it's a unit of measurement. Perhaps Qt provides an attribute for that, and if so, MuseScore should probably use it - regardless of whether it adds the space, but simply because it would be the correct use of the attribute.

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• Nov 21, 2013 - 16:12

I tend to agree with Marc. Text rules are different than UI rules. Older and more mainstream open source projects, with a lot more contributors, like LibreOffice/OpenOffice or Inkscape doesn't separate the unit in spinboxes either.

shot_131121_165856.png

shot_131121_170452.png

Qt just provides a way to add a suffix and a prefix, there is no other semantic attached. It's the responsability of the application to add the space in the suffix if needed/wanted. I would vote to keep it like it is right now in the code. Translators can do what they want in their own translation.

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• Nov 21, 2013 - 16:16

Marc: "[...] the rules for GUI design are often different (as they are for the use of sentences with ending punctuation - this is almost never appropriate in a GUI)."

That is no argument for omitting the space between number and unit.

Marc: "Look at other software programs and you'll see it done both ways."

I checked Igor Engraver, and it uses spaces almost always except in one pane in a settings dialog window where it said e.g. "10ms" for 10 milliseconds, but in another pane it said "10 ms" so it was probably just a typo in the earlier pane. Why should MuseScore opt for the worse practise with poorer legibility omitting the space?

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• Nov 21, 2013 - 17:34

Jojo: "As per that the core developers seem to have decided to use the OpenOffice style"

That's plain stupid.

Jojo: "[...] that space would have to be added manually -> no bug in Qt and no other means of getting that effect."

OK, so it wasn't a bug at all.

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• Nov 21, 2013 - 17:05

Please. We are arguing about a space in the UI now... And comparing an obscure scorewriter package, although very good, with a 100 millions users word processor...

Case is closed. There will be no space between values and units in spinboxes in MuseScore code. Feel free to make the swedish translation more legible if you want.

Feedback on more essential things is also welcome!

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• Nov 21, 2013 - 17:50

Nicolas: "And comparing an obscure scorewriter package, although very good, with a 100 millions users word processor..."

Obscure or not, Igor Engraver is even after 11 years of an almost complete standstill far ahead of every other score editor when it comes to the user interface. Then you apply the logical fallacy of argumentum ad numerum to back up the faulty decision.

Nicolas: "Case is closed. There will be no space between values and units in spinboxes in MuseScore code."

Quite amazing, I must say. Who are you to say such a thing? Are you the supreme dictator of MuseScore? It would be interesting to hear what Werner has to say. Come on, Werner, if you are reading this.

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• Nov 21, 2013 - 19:29

Jojo Schmitz linked in a comment above to the OpenOffice.org User Interface Text Style Guide, and that turned out to be interesting reading. I have in that text not been able to find any rule that says there shall be no space between a number and its unit. So the omitted space in e.g. LibreOffice seems to be just sloppy program writing and as such should be no model for MuseScore.

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