Small column widths on column headers
Messages which are used as column headers sometimes have to be very short, for example Centralnotice-number-uses ("Uses"). The maximum length of this message is 5% of the table width, which on some screens and with some browsers I imagine is very short, maybe 6 or 7 letters? Because of this restriction, there are going to be some messages which cannot be translated into some languages, no matter how clever the translator is.
Would it be possible to change Mediawiki so that each column header has two messages attached? The second message would be optional, only used when there is a problem with the translated column header not fitting the available space. Then the message in the column header would be a reference letter or number and the second message would appear just above or just below the table, and start with the reference letter or number and give the title of the column, like other keys or legends.
I know that this is not the wiki where this change can be made, but before pursuing this idea, I want to ask the opinion of my colleagues here, since this would be a change specifically designed to assist localisation.
Proper course of action would be to have developers be aware and acknowledge the importance of localisation of the UI parts that they code up, and at least respect a few of the fundamental consequences of having them localised for the way that they format the UI.
This article contains a few very basic hints that you can point them to.
I'm not sure that I'm the best person to 'have developers be aware....' (seeing as it took a while to find out that UI means User Interface) but I'm willing to give it a go. Could you let me know which forum this should be raised in?
With regard to Centralnotice-number-uses I have had a look at some of the translations made before the constraint on length was noted. The prize for having the most letters chopped off goes to Dutch, with total characters and spaces of 21. There are quite a few languages not much shorter than 21. As a result of my quick survey, I can make one important recommendation. Everybody in the world should learn Italian, because its translation of this message has only 3 characters (although its not the only language with 3 characters for this message).
Until we've all learnt Italian....
Is it possible to make the developers aware of the specific problem with this message and ask them to fix it, either by adding a legend to this column header or some other method?
This is one of the widespread issues of MediaWiki we've not find any idea of solution for; where should it be tracked? We have issues even in critical pieces of MediaWiki like the Upload wizard...
P.s.: I've checked the Italian translation and it's even correct, kudos to the translator (lower quality translators would have used the more pompous "Utilizzazioni" which is 4 times longer and less correct).