Put ellipsis in the middle not at the end

[theking2]

Tip

Help move this idea forward

• Use the 👍 reaction to show support for this feature.
• Avoid commenting unless you have relevant information to add; unnecessary comments create noise for subscribers.
• Subscribe to receive notifications about status changes and new comments.

---

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Long filenames are abreviated by replacing that last characters before the extension with ellipsis (…) This might hide important information (version, date what have you). Bad UX design.

Describe the solution you'd like
Instead put the ellipsis in the middle. (good us design!)

Describe alternatives you've considered
buy a larger dispay

Additional context
UX basicx

realy-long-filename with many characters and important information at the end_Version2.0.docx

realy-long-filename with many characters and important….docx vs
realy-long-filename with many…ion at the end_Version2.0.docx

[skjnldsv]

Describe alternatives you've considered buy a larger dispay

Ahaha, thanks for the laugh 😁
Thanks for your report, but we already do that :)

[susnux]

@skjnldsv they request:

• Fullname: Lang Filename That Overflows.odt
• Current UI: Long Filename... .odt
• They want: Long ... Overflows.odt

I think its much harder to archive this behavior (current behavior is native browser behavior), so @nextcloud/designers is this something you would consider worth doing?

[skjnldsv]

I misunderstood, thanks for the help @susnux 😊

[szaimen]

@skjnldsv they request:

• Fullname: Lang Filename That Overflows.odt
• Current UI: Long Filename... .odt
• They want: Long ... Overflows.odt

I think its much harder to archive this behavior (current behavior is native browser behavior), so @nextcloud/designers is this something you would consider worth doing?

I think this is what for example macos does, so I guess it is generally a good idea :)

[theking2]

Depending if this is done in browser or not probably is key here. If indeed the ui relies on browser truncation it is hard to do. SSR would be achieved with:

function truncateFilename(string $filename, int $maxLength): string
{
    $ext = pathinfo($filename, PATHINFO_EXTENSION);
    $name = pathinfo($filename, PATHINFO_FILENAME);

    $extPart = $ext ? '.' . $ext : '';
    $maxNameLength = $maxLength - strlen($extPart);

    if ($maxNameLength <= 0) {
        return substr($extPart, 0, $maxLength);
    }

    if (strlen($name) <= $maxNameLength) {
        return $filename;
    }

    $keep = $maxNameLength - 1; // 1 char for …
    $start = (int) ceil($keep / 2);
    $end = $keep - $start;

    return substr($name, 0, $start) . '…' . substr($name, -$end) . $extPart;
}

Example:

truncateFilename('my-very-long-document-name.pdf', 20);
// → 'my-very-l…ment.pdf'

But there should be a way to find the actual render length.