The software has a lot of text, on buttons, settings, hint tooltips, and more. What matters the most is consistency. In this document are specified the various rules to follow to edit or add text inside the Graphical User Interface.

Note that these rules are regarding the original text only, i.e. US English. Every translation team is encouraged to have their own rules adapted to their locale.

Actions⁠

Actions are basically everything which can go in menus, or is visible in the Action Search in particular. Sometimes actions can also be attached to specific widgets, such as buttons.

3 main strings are attached to it:

Label

This is the title string. Examples of labels are: "New Layer...", "White Balance", "Gaussian Blur...". Formatting rules are:

1. Title Case: using the APA style.
2. When the action will result in opening an intermediate interactive dialog, we suffix with 3 dots.
   If the dialog being opened is the action’s finality though, and not an intermediary step towards the real finality, do not add 3 dots. For instance, “Preferences” has no final dots, because the Preferences dialog is the finality. But the Open Image dialog of the “Open…” action is only a step towards actual opening action.
   Note: for consistency with historical usage, use actual 3-dots and not the ellipsis character ‘…’.
   

Short Label (optional)

Some actions may have a shorter version of its label which will be used in menu thanks to the context of menu position. An example of this is action "Zoom 2:1 (200%)" with short label "2:1 (200%)" because it is in the submenu Edit > Zoom. The short label is shown in this context, whereas the longer Label is used when the action has no context (e.g. in result of the Action Search).
Formatting rules are the same as for the main Label.

Blurb (optional)

The action blurb is typically used as tooltip in menus, buttons or other widgets. In the Action Search result, it is displayed more like a subtitle to the main title. Two type of blurbs are accepted:

1. Phrasal verb: a capitalized infinitive followed by more words, explaining what the action does. An example is: “Create a new layer and add it to the image”
2. Noun phrase: first word only is capitalized, e.g.: “Automatic white balance correction”

PDB Procedures⁠

PDB Procedures (registered by plug-ins in particular) have the same label and the blurb strings as Actions since they are also actions.

They have also an additional string: the Help text is currently only used in the “Additional Information” of the Procedure Browser.

We don’t have any specific formatting rule on this string, so far. It’s more free text for third-party developers when a procedure needs more information than just the label, blurb and argument list doesn’t feel enough. Not sure if we need any rules here.

File PDB Procedure⁠

As a special case, file procedures all follow the same wording:

• Their label is the most common or well known name for the format, e.g. “PNG”. It can be longer or more descriptive when needed, such as “Photoshop image (merged)” which is a special procedure loading PSD files differently.
• Blurb for:

  • Load Procedures:

    Load file in XYZ file format

    … where “XYZ” is to be replaced by the most common or well known name for the format. E.g.: “Load file in PNG file format”

  • Export Procedures:

    Export image to XYZ file format

• Help text is not mandatory, yet it can be of interest to give the longer name variant of a format, or other details. E.g.: “This plug-in loads Portable Network Graphics (PNG) files.”

GUI Widgets⁠

Our interface displays various widgets with text, such as checkboxes, combo boxes, sliders, etc.

Current formatting rules for both passive (settings-type, e.g. in Tool options) and active (mostly buttons) widgets:

Label, Checkbox, scale, combo box items…

The first letter is capitalized (sentence-case).
E.g.: “Enable dynamics”, “Sample merged” (checkboxes), “Image opacity” (scale), “Lighten only” (combo box).

Radio buttons

The title of a radio button group should be title-cased, similarly to Actions labels. Nevertheless, each button’s label should be sentence-cased (first letter is capitalized) like labels, checkboxes, etc.
E.g.: in the Bucket Fill tool, a settings is represented with a radio group title “Affected Area” (title-case) with options such as “Fill whole selection” (sentence-case).

Button

Buttons are active widgets and often associated to actions. Therefore their label must be title-cased, following the formatting rules as Actions labels (whether they are actually actions or not).
E.g.: “Reset Range” (Color Balance dialog) or “Reset Channel” (Curves).

Title

Section titles (e.g. “Outline Options” in the Text tool), dialog titles (e.g. “Create a New Image” dialog) dockable title (e.g. “Document History”) or tool names (“Unified Transform”) are title-cased using APA style, as we do for Actions labels.

Checkbox used as title

A common GUI in GIMP is using a checkbox hiding/showing other settings depending on its state. Typically the other settings are hidden as expander or frame contents. These must still be sentence-cased like any other checkbox, despite their dual status.

Tooltip

They are sentence-cased using the same rules as Actions blurbs. This applies for any tooltip on all types of widgets.

Status bar

Status bar’s text is sentence-cased. It can be instructions, such as “Click to paint” or informative status information (e.g. the name of the currently selected layer and the size of the image in memory).