Post publish panel: Simplify design and follow best practices for localization

[afercia]

Description

Splitting this out from https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/56381#issuecomment-1845056167

WordPress best practices for localization strongly recommend to avoid translatable strings that concatenate or contain variables, because the variable may differ in gender and number in languages other than English. In these cases it would be impossible to correctly translate the string.

There are several cases in the Gutenberg codebase where this recommendation is not followed. One of these cases is in the 'post publish pane':

https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/blob/40c233f929dc1668541a2fbd9eadd40d2b790bd0/packages/editor/src/components/post-publish-panel/postpublish.js#L128-L132

The above string can't be translated correctly. The placeholder gets replaced with the post type, which can vary in gender.

While in English 'Post address', 'Page address' or 'Product address' etc. are perfectly okay, in ohter languages translators would need to:

• Use an appropriate gender form, for example in Italian:
  • Indirizzo dell'articolo
  • Indirizzo della pagina
• Change the order of the words in the string but they can't do it if they don't know what %s will be replaced with.

These string should:

• Either use a post type label (a new one to be added in Core) as done for viewPostLabel and addNewPostLabel.
• Be changed to a simpler string, also for consistency as explained in https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/56381#issuecomment-1845056167 for example Permalink.

Right now thie can't be translated correctly and we can't blame translators for this. Given this string:

__( '%s address' ),

translators can only translate address and hope that it will rok in all cases. Unfortunately, it doesn't worl

The same problem occurs when concatenating text. Concatenation should always be avoided. This is not translatable corrrectly:

https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/blob/trunk/packages/editor/src/components/post-publish-panel/postpublish.js/#L114-L117

because in many languages the adjectives published and scheduled vary in gender depending whether the post type name is male or female.

Screenshots comparing Post / Page panels in English and Italian:

Step-by-step reproduction instructions

• Switch the WordPress admin to a language with gender forms e.g. Italian.
• Publish a post or page.
• In the post-publish panel, observe the strings mentioned above in the issue description can't be translated correctly.

Screenshots, screen recording, code snippet

No response

Environment info

No response

Please confirm that you have searched existing issues in the repo.

Yes

Please confirm that you have tested with all plugins deactivated except Gutenberg.

Yes

[SergeyBiryukov]

Related: #28990

[afercia]

Thinking at this a little more in depth, I think including the linked post title in the 'published' or 'scheduled' string does or harms than good.

When publishing or scheduling a post, the most important information I'd like to have as a used is some feedback that confirms the post has been publishedor scheduled successfully. As a used, I would benefit from that information to be prominent in the post-publish panel. Instead, what I get is the linked post title in great prominence. The 'is now live' and 'is now scheduled' parts of the string are visually less prominent and not that readable. This i smore evident when the post title is long and goes in two lines. Screenshot to illustrate:

I'd argue this isn't idea. While I understand some of the reasoning behind thie implementation, I think a clear, short, message that just informs me the publishing / scheduling was successful would be better. Im not sure the post title should be there in the first place. Also, making the post title a link seems redundant and just clutter the UI as there's a well visible 'View Post' button in the panel.

[afercia]

One more case: concatenating a string with a variable (in this case a component that renders different date and time in different format) is not translatable correctly:

https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/blob/16ec554a2605d45414ee121e2f36c1d7177974ad/packages/editor/src/components/post-publish-panel/postpublish.js#L104-L105

For example, when scheduling a post to be published today at a later time, PostScheduleLabel renders the word Today. I'm not sure on Today is correct English:

More importantly, in other languages, on would need to be changed to something else or entirely omitted depending whether PostScheduleLabel renders a date or a word like Today. In Italian, for example, il 7 settembre is correct but il Oggi is totally wrong:

Also, in languages other than English on may need to be changed to something else depending on the day number. for example, in Italian:

• il 2 dicembre is correct.
• il 8 dicembre is wrong. As 8 is pronounced otto and starts with a vocal, the article il is incorrect. It should be: l'8 dicembre.
• il 11 dicembre is wrong as well, for the same reason.

[afercia]

After various attempts, I realized that it's not possible to fix the translatable strings without introducing design changes. As such, I'd like to broaden the scope of this issue to propose a new, simpler, clearer, design of the publish panel. I'll update this issue title accordingly.