Bug 153694 - Do not localize Bold/Italic/Underline icons
Summary: Do not localize Bold/Italic/Underline icons
Status: RESOLVED INVALID
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: UI (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: needsUXEval
Depends on:
Blocks: Icon-Themes
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2023-02-17 14:46 UTC by Adrian
Modified: 2023-02-21 11:54 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
LO_Polish (21.46 KB, image/png)
2023-02-18 06:11 UTC, Adrian
Details

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Description Adrian 2023-02-17 14:46:27 UTC
Description:
Hi! I looked through the backlog, but haven't found anything similar to my idea.

I am a volunteer at a senior center, and I have started an initiative to migrate seniors’ old laptops from Windows 7/8 to Linux Mint 21.1, combined with 10 lessons how to use their new operating system and software. It goes really well, but there are always those tiny things.

One of those is a default set of localized Bold/Italic/Underline icons (Colibre theme) – in Polish version instead of B/I/U (Bold/Italic/Underline), we get G/K/P (poGrubienie/Kursywa/Podkreślenie). The same applies to other languages, with a different (local) combination of letters.

The problem is that people who used MS Office, or other office suits, are really familiar with B/I/U, and they cannot recognize other icons, although more experience users use keyboard shortcuts and don’t even notice a difference in UI.

Is this something you would consider changing, or allowing for customization in options?

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open LibreOffice Writer (this applies to other applications that allow user to format text)
2. Have a look at the Formatting toolbar (Standard toolbar interface) or formatting section of the Home tab (Tabbed interface)
3. Check your B/I/U icons

Actual Results:
Localization changes B/I/U icons to their local versions, in case of Polish it's G/K/P

Expected Results:
1) Have B/I/U icons standardized accross all languages

OR

2) Give users a choice to customize B/I/U icons


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
It's been like this as long as I can remember. It could be worth incorporating into a welcome screen, to let users to choose their interface, theme (starting 7.5.1), etc.
Comment 1 Rafael Lima 2023-02-17 23:45:14 UTC
These icons are supposed to be localized and they depend on the UI language set in Tools - Options - Language Settings - Languages.

Can you share a screenshot of what you're seeing?

In my language (pt-BR) these icons are localized. I believe they're localized in Polish as well.
Comment 2 Adrian 2023-02-18 06:11:12 UTC
Created attachment 185457 [details]
LO_Polish

Rafael that's the whole point - it works as designed, but not necessarily as expected by users.

This not a bug report, this is more of an enhancement request to have those icons either not localized, or give that choice to the users.
Comment 3 QA Administrators 2023-02-19 03:20:17 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 4 Rafael Lima 2023-02-19 21:24:00 UTC
(In reply to Adrian from comment #2)
> This not a bug report, this is more of an enhancement request to have those
> icons either not localized, or give that choice to the users.

Ok, now I get it... so you would like to disable localization of these B/I/U icons. I did not know that these icons were not localized in MS Office for the Polish language. In pt-BR (Brazilian Portuguese, the locale I use) these icons are localized by MS.

Just another question... Does this request only apply for the B/I/U icons or there are other icons that should be considered?
Comment 5 Adrian 2023-02-20 09:09:16 UTC
I am aware of 4 icons: 
- Bold (G->B)
- Italic (K->I)
- Underline (P->U)
- Double Underline (P->U)

There are mostlikely more languages that this applies to.
Comment 6 Heiko Tietze 2023-02-20 09:56:15 UTC
IMO it's easier to accept the localized version than to learn the untranslated label. My take is WF but up to the icon designer(s).

See also bug 120135 and bug 128689 as examples for more localization rather then less and the (even better) idea to use symbols that don't need localization.
Comment 7 Rizal Muttaqin 2023-02-20 12:21:29 UTC
Localization is one of the strong aspects that LibreOffice tries to offer. As per my comment written in, LibreOffice supports 119 languages ​​while MS Office only 86 languages (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-languages-is-office-available-in-26d30382-9fba-45dd-bf55-02ab03e2a7ec). Whereas in Wikipedia, LibreOffice supports 115 languages while MS Office is listed as supporting 102 languages. I guess here that there is a tendency to reduce localization support in MS Office products.

Seeing this kind of positive trend, I think it's very good if all aspects of technology also support it. This includes icons. As mentioned in previous comments that some of these localized formatting icons depend on what UI language is used. That is, the most appropriate solution is to change the UI locale. After all, I'm guessing the reason is because of familiarity, right?

Or maybe instead of changing the icon, an additional option/toggle when changing the UI interface e.g. "Localize icon" can help although this solution requires coding so the effort required will be greater.

So my take from icon designer point of view is WONTFIX.
Comment 8 Adrian 2023-02-20 16:20:20 UTC
Thank you Rizal for your input. Although an option/toggle would be extremely welcome, I fully understand it's extra development effort.
Comment 9 Heiko Tietze 2023-02-21 10:05:56 UTC
The workaround is to "hack" the icon set and delete all localized forms (the program should use the fall-back in this case). Find the icons as zip's under /usr/lib/libreoffice/share/config/ or install another icon theme via extension and check the user space. Search for folders under cmd with locale-id like ar,de,es,fr,hu... 

Sharing this un-localized icon theme as extension would be a solution for a group of users then.
Comment 10 Adrian 2023-02-21 11:54:01 UTC
I will look into that, thanks!