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macOS: German localization of menu items should have a space before the ellipsis

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Open Inkscape 1.0alpha2
  2. Switch to German UI language:
  3. Open Inkscape > Edit > Preferences…
  4. Select Interface
  5. Under Language (requires restart), select German (de)
  6. Restart Inkscape
  7. Klick e.g. on the menu Datei

What happened?

The menu opened and you can see that all menu items, which will open a dialog for further user interaction are followed by an ellipsis … character without a leading space, Example: Öffnen…. The ellipsis is the Unicode "Horizontal ellipsis" U+2026.

What should have happened?

On macOS, ellipsis-followed menu items have a space before the ellipsis in German localizations, the example above should read Öffnen …. In German language a grammatical rule says that an ellipsis, which replaces one or more words must be preceded (and suffixed) by one space. More about that e.g. here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auslassungspunkte#Kombination_mit_Leerzeichen

As a consequence, in the German localizations of ellipsis-followed menu items on macOS, the ellipsis is always preceded by a space across all native Cocoa applications, apparently adhering the German grammar. I can imagine that this is something organized by the OS, as a matter of the German localization, because I cannot believe that all app developers on the Mac even realize that fact. Here is an example from the Finder in some languages:

finder-ellipsis

The topic was discussed in https://chat.inkscape.org/channel/team_devel_mac recently, @NPJ2000, @Moini, @dehesselle might remember. I agreed to create this issue for further discussion. @Moini confirmed in the discussion that the ellipsis seems not to be part of the translations in Inkscape either, so it must be added programmatically (by the application?). Maybe there is some macOS specific integration or localization setting to make the preceding space appear also in Inkscape's German localization?

I purposely marked this issue as macOS only, because investigating a little bit in various German Windows applications, I never found a preceding space in their German localizations. On the Mac however, it's so obvious that there has to be some reasoning behind it, although I have seen other cross platform open source applications, whose German localizations did also lack the preceding ellipsis space, e.g. QCAD or kicad. I would believe it might have to do with the UI library, which is used to bring the app on the Mac.

Inkscape Version and Operating System:

  • Inkscape Version: 1.0alpha2 (863a58d, 2019-08-17), official notarized build
  • Operating System version: macOS Mojave 10.14.6 (18G87)