fix(studio): Studio's own text reads without em or en dashes - #5414

What

Text a person reads in Studio no longer uses em dashes (—) or en dashes (–). That covers Studio's own tooltips, toasts, empty states, errors and labels, and the messages it shows from other packages: lint findings, SDK save refusals, studio-server errors, audio FX and preset copy from core, and render errors from the producer and engine. They now use a colon, a comma, a period, parentheses, or "to" for a range. A new lint check keeps it that way.

Why

Studio's text should use plain punctuation, and the dashes were used inconsistently across it. A lint check is the root fix: without it, new text brings them back.

Related work

None.

How

• scripts/check-studio-copy-dashes.mjs parses every non-test .ts/.tsx file under src in studio, core, engine, lint, parsers, player, producer, sdk, shader-transitions and studio-server with the TypeScript compiler. It fails on U+2013 or U+2014 inside string literals, template literal parts and JSX text. It reads the parsed value, so an escaped — counts too, and it also catches —, – and their numeric forms, which JSX keeps raw and React renders as dashes. Comments, regex literals and test files are not checked. It runs in the root lint script as check:studio-copy-dashes; its test is in test:scripts.
• On main it reports 304 hits: studio 106, producer 51, lint 50, core 42, engine 38, sdk 6, player 5, parsers 2, shader-transitions 2, studio-server 2. Each was rewritten by hand:
  • a pause became a colon, a comma, "so", or a new sentence (Copy failed — check permissions → Copy failed. Check permissions, Linked audio would start after the new end — unlink or trim → ... after the new end. Unlink or trim);
  • a range became "to" (0.0s – 10.0s → 0.0s to 10.0s, try 600–1000 → try 600 to 1000);
  • a lone dash used as an empty value became a word: the Peak Amplitude readout shows Unavailable (no measurable peak), an unset in/out point in the shortcuts panel shows Not set, the text-case "none" button shows None, and the select placeholder — select branch — became Select branch.
  • where the dash sat in a comment inside code that ships as a string (audio worklet source, GLSL, player CSS, injected page scripts), the comment was reworded the same way; behaviour is unchanged.
• No hyphen was swapped in for a dash.
• Two narrow exemptions, each matched on its exact text in its file:
  • core/src/compiler/compositionScoping.ts: a comment inside injected runtime JS ("Swallow — the scoped root ..."). It is copied byte for byte into the producer's regression goldens and the docs catalog payloads, and no person reads it.
  • core/src/figma/mediaIndex.ts: the "—" empty cell of .media/index.md, a file written for agents. It must stay identical to the two media-use copies of the same generator, which a parity test enforces.
• Not scanned, because Studio never shows their text: cli (terminal output), aws-lambda, gcp-cloud-run, sdk-playground, and Studio's dev-only vite.config.ts.
• Tests that asserted the old text were updated (studio, engine hdr, producer hdrMode, cli checkBrowser, studio sdkCutover.linkedTiming). packages/producer/de-gatecheck.sh greps one engine log line and now matches the new wording. docs/studio/animation.mdx quotes the new "Computed value" notice.

Review

Independent adversarial review of the Studio-only commits: no blocking findings. Should-fix items were addressed: the docs line, HTML entities in the check, test coverage for every node kind and the file filter, and the empty peak value wording.

Test plan

• Check on main (bb9e507): exit 1, 304 hits (per package above). On this branch: passes.

• Gate test: 5/5 pass, 3 runs in a row. Each mutation fails it: removing any checked node kind, narrowing the file filter to .ts, dropping or narrowing any entity form, dropping the case-insensitive flag, dropping a package from the scan, or widening an exemption.

• bun run lint and bun run format:check: green.

• Typecheck green for core, engine, producer, lint, sdk, parsers, player, shader-transitions, studio-server, cli and studio.

• Test suites (Linux): core 198 files, engine 91, producer 54, lint 20, sdk 23, parsers 45, player 17, shader-transitions 6, studio-server 69, studio 694, all passing. cli: 306 files pass. 2 files (browser/launch.process, motion-signature.browser.chromium) fail the same way with and without this change, from timeouts launching the browser on that machine.

• Changed test files pass 3 runs in a row.

• Before/After captures of the Linked Selection tooltip from the Studio dev server on the product-promo registry example.

• Unit tests added/updated

• Manual testing performed

• Documentation updated (if applicable)

• Comments follow CONTRIBUTING.md "Comments": they say why, not what, and a bug fix says what the code must do and how to reproduce the bug

Before

After