Could "parallels" become "more"?

Feedback
1

Since this has now been added to the internationalization files, I wonder if we could reconsider the label that is now “parallels”

image

When you click on that icon, what you get is:

  • Summary/blurb
  • Link to SCVoice
  • Sharing link (which is actually much more that that)
  • Other translations into your selected language
  • the root text
  • translations into other languages

and finally

  • parallels

So not only is the label incomplete, I’m betting that many people aren’t even aware what “parallels” means in this context so they would be less likely to even try clicking on it. And if they did know, then they wouldn’t expect to find all those other things.

I realize that “more” is kind of anemic, but it’s at least accurate and invites exploration.

As well, I wonder how easy it will be to accurately internationalize this into something so succinct. I would bet, though, that “more” will be fairly straightforward to translate.

Bhante @Sujato?

This has been brought up before, but there is a bit more urgency around this once people start to translate into other UI languages.

4 Likes
2

Seconded! :+1:

Okay, discourse wants me to type a little more … :person_shrugging:

3

My vote would be to move the summary blurb to “:information_source: Info” and then rename “Parallels” to “Links”

1 Like
4

I wouldn’t support this vote so much. I think hardly anyone ever clicks the “i” button, so the blurbs would go mostly unnoticed. :cry:

1 Like
5

Perhaps if the summary info was in the Info menu more people would open it?

Ideally you want to balance the top-level buttons so that they each are about as useful/important as the others, otherwise people are doing more scrolling within the drop-down than they have to…

1 Like
6

Well my general impression with “i” buttons is that hardly anybody seems to notice them. With Voice for example hardly anybody seems to be aware that the “i” button leads to a detailed documentation in several languages about how to use the application.

But apart from this, it dawns on me that when replying to you initially, what I had in mind was actually something different. I had the Suttaplex cards in mind, and there the blurbs are very useful (certainly not only) to me. For example I have quite often been looking for a specific Jataka, so I just opened suttacentral.net/ja and had the list of all Suttaplex cards. Then I can go through the blurbs or search for keywords there in order to find what I was looking for.

But we have a different situation when we see the “parallels” button as on the screenshot above. Here we are already on a Sutta page, and here it is indeed less essential to have the blurb available.

So okay, I can agree with you on this, under the condition that the blurbs will remain on the Suttaplex cards. As both the parallels cards and the Suttaplex cards have more or less the same content, in my mind they were just the same thing, but obviously they aren’t.

1 Like
7

That’s usually indicated with a “?”

Great! Indeed I was only talking about the sutta page :blush:

1 Like
8

I’m opposed to any change other than the one I proposed because I don’t want to muddy the waters. :rofl: Also, I really doubt bhante will want to make any other changes to the interface. Plus, it would be good to change the English now if it’s ever going to happen, before the interface translators get to work.

I agree that the blurb is more similar to information (in general) than it is to actual parallels. However the blurb is part of the suttaplex card, and that’s what “parallels” actually is. As it is, I see “info” as short for “information about this translation.” If that is true, then the blurb doesn’t belong there since it is more information about this sutta in general.

Also, I don’t think “links” is better than “more”. The main thing it takes you to is more translations. I usually think of “links” as taking me to other websites. I mean, everything within a website is a link.

3 Likes