EPUB3 dc:date corrupted to <meta refines property="Veröffentlichungsdatum"> in German

[Einstein]

Sigil version: 2.8.0 (also affects earlier versions using the same sigil_de.ts)
OS: Windows 11
UI language: German

Problem:
When adding a publication date via Meta Editor → Add Basic Metadata → "Veröffentlichungsdatum" (German for "Date Published") in an EPUB3 book, the date is not saved as a proper <dc:date> element. Instead it's written as:

<meta refines="#des" property="Veröffentlichungsdatum">2022-09-26</meta>

This is invalid — property should be dcterms:date/dc:date, not the literal translated UI label, and it should never refine the description (#des). On reopening, the date field shows at the top of the metadata tree, appears indented, and is lost/not saved correctly on subsequent edits.

Suspected root cause:
src/Resource_Files/ts/sigil_de.ts has a leading space typo in the translation:

<source>Date Published</source>
<translation> Veröffentlichungsdatum</translation>

MetaEditor::EName()/ECode() (src/Dialogs/MetaEditor.cpp) do a raw string match between the tree's stored display text and the m_ElementCode lookup table with no .trimmed(). If the leading space gets stripped anywhere in the Qt tree-view cell round-trip (e.g. on cell edit/commit), the reverse lookup silently fails and falls back to using the raw (translated) name as the internal code:

const QString MetaEditor::ECode(const QString& name)
{
if (m_ElementCode.contains(name)) return m_ElementCode[name];
return name; // silent fallback — writes translated text as code
}

This only affects EPUB3, since EPUB2 dates go through the separate opf:event/dc:date-publication code path, not the generic meta refines/property system.

Reproduction: Confirmed reproducible on a fresh EPUB3 file using only "Add Basic Metadata" → "Veröffentlichungsdatum", nothing else touched. Does not occur with English UI ("Date Published").

Suggested fix: Remove the leading space in sigil_de.ts line ~16573, and/or make ECode()/PCode() trim input before lookup as defensive fix.

Workaround: Switch Sigil UI language to English (Preferences → Language) before setting the publication date field, then switch back.

[KevinH]

Unfortunately, we do not control the volunteer generated translation files. They are hosted on Transifex. So unless you post a translation bug report in the Sigil Project on Transifex, I doubt it will be fixed unless that volunteer translator just happens to also be a member of MobileRead and sees your post.

But we can harden the Sigil code to left and right trim the translated string for comparison purposes.

I will look into doing that.

Thank you for your bug report.

[KevinH]

Okay, I added .trimmed() to the translated name tables built in MetaEditor.cpp. And the mapping from name to code uses those table values so this problem should now be fixed.

I tried switching to a German ui to test this but my highschool German from 50 years ago was not enough to run the test.

I have pushed this fix to master. It should appear in the next release of Sigil.

Once we have a Windows 11 test build with this fix, I will post a link here for you to test with to confirm this bug has been squashed.

Thank you!

[DNSB]

To simplify keeping my test builds links up to date, you can find my latest test build for Windows in the Downloading Sigil test builds for Windows thread.