Re: `New' sub-menu in desktop's rightclick-menu

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

On 22 May 2002, Lars Weber wrote:
> this is perhaps nothing for the Gnome 2.0 release anymore because of the
> UI-freeze but as there already four `New ...' items in the desktop's
> rightclick-menu I wonder whether they should be moved to their own `New'
> sub-menu like in the following mockup:
>
>   <http://me.in-berlin.de/~lars/cruft/nautilus-rightclick.png>

This actually has a localization implication. The form of "New" as an
adjective does in many languages depend upon the subject. English is of
course an exception here. An example (using Swedish):

New folder           Ny mapp
New window           Nytt fönster

"New" is "ny" in Swedish but its form does vary depending on the gender of
the subject. Thus it becomes complicated and often broken to split "new"
and its subject, and only using one form of "new". Using the example
above, saying "nytt mapp" or "ny fönster" would both be wrong, so only one
form of "new" can't be used. The suggested layout has this problem:

New -> Window        Ny -> Fönster
       Folder              Mapp

The example was for Swedish, but there are several other languages where
the same problems will arise if adjectives and their subjects are split,
like German and French.


One possible solution is to repeat the "new" in the submenu, which would
make the situation slightly better:

New -> New window    Ny -> Nytt fönster
       New folder          Ny mapp


Christian