[texworks] Updated German translation

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 31 January 2010 Jonathan Kew wrote:

 > I've committed this update; thanks.
 > 
 > You raise some good points here; I can see that these could be
 > tricky to translate. Actually, I think this also highlights the
 > fact that even in English, these are rather awkward terms that
 > might be too jargon-ish. Perhaps we should consider whether there
 > would be better terminology we could use in English, too.
 > [...]

I even think that it's better to get rid of the "Scripts" menu at all
sometime in the future.  But then it's necessary that the main menu
can be accessed by the scripts.

A user without any technical background might wonder why the "Indent"
stuff is in the "Format" menu and the "Toggle Bold" stuff is in the
"Scripts" menu.  This is not obvious.  It would be better if both can
be found in the "Format" menu.  And the hook scripts could better be
dis/enabled in the "Preferences" menu, if necessary.

I think it's better if users don't have to distinguish between
built-in commands and extensions provided by scripts.  Let's take
Emacs as an example: A user usually doesn't know whether a particular
feature is written in C or in Lisp.

Is it possible to make the menus themselves extendable by scripts? I
suppose that the internal representation of the menu is based on
nested lists.  If true, can they be exposed to the scripts?  A script
could insert "Toggle Bold" to the "Format" menu, for instance.  Does
qt-script already provide such an interface?

When I asked for scripting support I was certainly inspired by Emacs.
The idea is to have a core program, written in C/C++, which can be
extended without the need to be re-compiled again each time one adds a
new feature.  If most of it's functionality comes from scripts, then
the core program can become more stable even when it's extended at
the same time.  But these are internal things, normal users shouldn't
be aware of them, IMO.

I don't think that it's possible to find good translations for phrases
we have in the "Scripts" menu currently.  There are many things in
computer jargon where a translation doesn't make any sense.  I don't
use a German locale on my machine for this reason, but I've seen
messages on other Linux machines like:

   "Datenübergabe unterbrochen (broken pipe)"

The guy who provided the German translation obviously recognized that
it's completely meaningless and gratefully added the English
expression.  In the world of computers or electronics, some
words/phrases simply can't be translated to German at all.  We Germans
are using English words like "pipe" in this context instead.

For the same reason I don't think it makes any sense to attempt to
translate the word "hook".  I don't even recommend to use it.  Only
programmers know what it means, but TeXworks users are not supposed to
have any programming experience.  Is there any reason to distinguish
between "Standalone Scripts" and "Hook Scripts" at all?

I think it's even better to avoid the word "script".  What is a
script?  A script is a program written in a scripting language.
Hence, it's a program.  There is even no reason to distinguish between
an external program and a built-in function.

For the time being I recommend to replace "Scripts" by "Extensions" in
the main menu, avoid to distinguish between "Standalone Scripts" and
"Hook Scripts", and to avoid computer jargon in general.

Some people already provided German translations, none of them really
convinced me.  Stefan's translation ("hook" -> "Anknüpfungspunkt") is
quite good, but every programmer in Germany uses the English word
"hook".  And people with no programming experience won't understand
neither "hook" nor "Anknüpfungspunkt".

The sole purpose of TeXworks is to lower the entry level.  Therefore
it makes sense to handle all this low-level stuff behind the scenes.
Let's avoid to bother users with implementation details and to avoid
phrases which are only understood by programmers or computer
scientists.  They can't be translated reasonably to other languages
anyway.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
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