What can go wrong with changing a text label?

• Globalization - If the app needs to support multiple languages, then the new text needs to be translated into all those target languages.
• Special Characters - The new text could support special characters that need to be encoded (like & or < or >).
• Non-supported characters - The new label introduces a special character not in the original character set (such as some foreign language), and the application only supports basic ASCII.
• Changes flow layout - The new label is longer or shorter, which changes the flow layout. For example, the new text is long enough to force wrapping (which pushes a row to high) or it doesn't wrap so it pushes a column to wide.
• It's an image - Perhaps the label is actually an image (for fancier looking designs), not just text.
• Text is not determined in the presentation layer - Perhaps the label is set dynamically through code or configs, such as pulling from a meta-data dictionary.
• Text was dynamically built - Perhaps the label was dynamically concatenated via some existing logic (for example, it pluralizes the text if some count > 1), so you're not just setting a literal string anymore.
• You don't own the text -  Perhaps the label comes from an embedded, third-party component that you don't own and cannot easily change.
• The label appears in multiple places - Perhaps the label appears in multiple places, and so all places need to be updated. For example, it also appears in a UI Report writer where you select the UI-friendly name instead of the database schema column/table.
• (Bad design) - other code depends on the label text - Perhaps the application has bad design, and there's actually code that reads the value of the label to determine if it should do some other action. For example, if the label contains some word X, then hide section Y (as opposed to whatever method sets label to word X also hides section Y).
• New font -  Perhaps the new text actually introduces a new font that isn't available on the client (this isn't merely changing text, but it's associated with that kind of request).

tags: businessrules  

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