fix: use curly quotation marks and apostrophes in alerts - #137
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Every alert that names a file wrapped it in straight ASCII quotes, which is not what the platform uses. The Apple Style Guide asks for curly opening and closing quotation marks outside of code font, and AppKit's own alerts follow it - "Do you want to revert the document "%@" to the last saved version?" Translators had mirrored the straight quotes into languages that never write them, so the marks inside each translation move at the same time, to whatever that language uses in AppKit's Document.loctable: low-high in Czech and German, guillemets in Greek, Russian and Ukrainian, corner brackets in Traditional Chinese, single marks in Korean and Dutch. Arabic keeps straight quotes, which is what the system does there.
The twelve contractions in the alerts - couldn't, isn't, it's - were written with the straight ASCII mark. The Apple Style Guide asks for the curly apostrophe outside of code font and units of measure, and AppKit's own English strings hold to it: twenty-eight use the curly mark and none use the straight one. The translations move too, all but Dutch, which writes the straight mark and whose single quotation marks around a file name would be swept up with it. Translator comments keep the straight mark; nobody reads them but translators.
itsjoshpark
changed the title
Write down what this branch just applied, so the next string added to the app starts with the right characters rather than being corrected afterwards.
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Description:
Front Row's alerts were written with straight ASCII quotes and apostrophes. The Apple Style Guide asks for curly opening and closing quotation marks, and the curly apostrophe, everywhere outside of code font, and AppKit's own alerts hold to both:
Of AppKit's English
Document.loctablestrings, 28 use the curly apostrophe and none use the straight one.Quotation marks — eleven alerts name a file, and each wrapped the name in
"…". They now use“…”, so the app matches what the rest of the system says around a document name.Apostrophes — twelve contractions across those alerts and their titles (couldn't, isn't, it's) now use
’.The marks inside the translations move with them, since translators had copied the straight characters into languages that never write them. Each language gets the quotation marks AppKit uses in its
Document.loctable:„…“(cs, de),«…»(el, ru, uk),« … »with non-breaking spaces (fr),„…”(hu, pl, ro),”…”(fi, sv),‘…’(ko),'…'(nl),「…」(zh-Hant), and“…”for the rest. Apostrophes turn curly in every language except Dutch, which writes the straight mark and whose single quotation marks around a file name would be swept up with it. Arabic keeps straight quotation marks, which is what the system uses there.Translator comments keep their straight characters; nobody reads them but translators.
AGENTS.mdrecords the rule, so the next string added starts with the right characters.The eleven source strings changed, so they will come back through Crowdin for review.
No release note: all eleven strings belong to features that haven't shipped yet, and
next.mdalready carries an "Updated: App localizations" line.