RTL Stopwatch out of order

[samreid]

Common code issue for the problem discovered in phetsims/forces-and-motion-basics#366. In short, the stopwatch numbers read mm:ss.ms (units) in English but was getting its spans shuffled in RTL languages to read (units) ms.mm:ss. Based on consultation with translators, we determined in RTL languages, we would like the output to read (units) mm:ss.ms. I will fix using the patch proposed by @jonathanolson in phetsims/forces-and-motion-basics#366 (comment) and the next step for this issue will be to (a) confirm this is the best way forward and (b) to see if the expense of a maintenance release is warranted. This issue will be marked blocks-publication until we complete (a).

[brent-phet]

@samreid Should this be a topic for dev meeting to "confirm this is the best way forward"?

[samreid]

I suspect that @jbphet is best qualified to review @jonathanolson's one line of code change proposal. After he reviews, let's see his or @jonathanolson thoughts regarding whether an maintenance release is warranted.

[jbphet]

Code-wise, the change seems reasonable to me for now, and I've added this to the list of issues to revisit once we have a better and more generalized approach for dealing with technical RTL, see phetsims/rosetta#475.

In response to the question about whether a maintenance release is warranted, I can give only a general answer. I just looked at the stopwatch's behavior in the currently published version of FAMB in an Arabic translation, and it seems fine. I'd suggest checking it in other RTL translations of sims that use the stopwatch and doing a maintenance release to fix any that are messed up.

[samreid]

@brent-phet is this something QA can test? Or should we close and wait for the community to report discovered problems to us?

[brent-phet]

I will enter an issue for QA and provide a list sims that use stopwatch.