From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Wed Jul 22 2009 - 18:24:02 CDT
On 7/22/2009 3:48 PM, André Szabolcs Szelp wrote:
> Hello,
>
> While your point might be valid in a number of cases, the very example
> you bring seems somewhat strained. Is it indeed the term you want to
> use in your UI? It would probably confuse your users more than not.
I think the general problem, that of the need of shortening long words
or phrases of certain laguaguages because of runtime changes in UI
layout is a real one.
As early as 1988 I used a piece of software that had a patented
algorithm to reduce arbitrary words and phrases to fit into narrow
columns, without being tripped up by the usual problem of lots of terms
with identical prefixes.
Therefore, arguing about the validity of an isolated example isn't going
to help.
P. Verdy had suggested the use of dual resources, both long and
abbreviated. That approach is more flexible in allowing abbreviations
that aren't strict substrings of given words. However, the dual
resources approach works only for precisely two screen widths.
An inline solution could have two modes.
a) A marker that identifies a place where some locale specific character
can be inserted to mark the end of a prefix-style abbreviation.
b) A set of paired markers, identifying a shortened form of the
preceding word.
Swedish uses the letter ":" together with the last letter of the word to
form many abbreviations, for example, thus the methodology that works
for the German case (substituting "." for a given tail end of a long
word) doesn't work
A./
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