Inconsistent command names in german translation

I’ m using Rhinoceros 20141217 on MacOS 10.8.5 with a german GUI.

There are three ways to access a command in Rhinoceros, but there shouldn’t be three different names for a command. While working through the german user guide, I found some commands where the name given in the main menu differs from the name in the tooltip / drop down menu and that differs from the command used on the command line:

Menu:
Kurve | Punktobjekt | Einzelner Punkt
Kurve | Punktobjekt | Mehrere Punkte
Tooltip:
Einzelner Punkt
Mehrere Punkte
Command:
Punkt
Punkte

This isn’t really a problem, “Punkt” and “Punkte” is probably what one tries first.

Menu:
Transformieren | Drehen
Transformieren | 3D-Rotation
Tooltip:
2D-Rotation
3D-Rotation
Command:
Drehen
3DRotation

This is a problem because when you type “drehen” you won’t find “Rotation” and when you type “Rotation” as seen in the tooltip, you won’t find “Drehen”

Menu:
Transformieren | Skalieren | 3D-Skalieren
Transformieren | Skalieren | 2D-Skalieren
Transformieren | Skalieren | 1D-Skalieren
Tooltip:
3D-Skalieren
2D-Skalieren
1D-Skalieren
Command:
Skalieren
2D-Skalieren
1D-Skalieren

Maybe use the 1D, 2D, 3D as a postfix.

Menu:
Transformieren | Anordnen | Rechtwinklig
Transformieren | Anordnen | Polar
Tooltip:
Rechteckige Anordnung
Polare Anordnung
Command:
Anordnen
PolarAnordnen

Note the difference “Rechtwinklig” = perpendicular and “Rechteckig” = rectangular.
You probably want the later.

Menu:
Volumenkörper | Rohr an Kurve
Tooltip:
Rohr, Flache Deckflächen [1]
Rohr, Runde Deckflächen [1]
Command:
Rohr an Kurve

[1] No help text found.

Here the drop down menu offers two choices that are not in the menu and don’t have commands. This probably confuses the help function.

Are you interested in this kind of bug reports?

Axel

Are you interested in this kind of bug reports?

Absolutely. Thank you. Please keep them coming. @thomas, can you please help triaging these and logging issue reports for German bugs?

One thing to note: we are currently in the middle of a major round of translation and localization changes, so things will definitely be in flux over the coming couple of WIP releases. Please keep your eyes open for the changes.

Interesting.
In Windows Rhino development, the area in dialogs has to be tall enough to fit Japanese, and long enough to fit German. It makes for a lot of dead space in other more compact language localizations. The developers are working with new tools that try to avoid duplication of effort between Windows and Mac Rhino. All this means is they are still working on it.

Thanks

Hi Axel,

I am Thomas, the German translator at McNeel.

First of all: thank you for your message, this kind of help is always appreciated!

Now, the issues you mention are translations that have been taken from Rhino for Windows and some of them go back many years. Also, command names in Rhino aren’t always exactly the same as their description in the menu. You will find more examples like that in the future. Maybe we should have maintained a stricter coherence in the first place, you may be right about that. In other cases, I agree with you that the translation could be different/better. However, at this point, I am in some sort of dilemma: The translations were used and documented like that for years in Rhino for Windows and we want to have the same wording in both versions for the basic commands. So, if I change a command name or a menu entry, this has to be made in all Rhino versions, has to be changed in the documentation and long-time users have to adapt to the new wording. For this reason, I tend to change the core translations only when they are simply wrong.

To your list:

  1. “Punkte” -> 1-to-1 translation from the English original. The same inconsistency applies also to the “Point” command and the “Simple Point” menu entry.

  2. “Drehen” -> In English, they use “Rotate” and “2DRotate” where we have “Drehen” and “2D-Rotation” in German. I will adjust the tooltip to “Drehen” so that we have consistency.

  3. “Skalieren” -> Same inconsistency in English. However, you should be able to find “2DSkalieren” also when typing in “Skali…” Does this not work?

  4. “Rechtwinklig” -> Error, you are absolutely right. I will change that.

  5. “Rohr” -> this is a technical inconsistency. With the “RohrAnKurve” (_Pipe) command, you can choose the “Deckfläche” (cap) in the options. If I am right, some buttons are like shortcuts for a command and a specific option. If you launch the “RohrAnKurve” command, Rhino should display the respecting help page (in my version, it does).

If you have more specific concerns regarding the German translation, you can also contact me directy if you prefer: thomas@mcneel.com

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Hi Thomas!

Now, the issues you mention are translations that have been taken from Rhino for Windows and some of them go back many years.

In theory the commands in the Mac Version should be the same as in the Windows version. Thus it is possible to use the Windows manuals for the Mac version. This is what I’m doing now. There are some inconsistencies that may be bugs in the manual and not in the Mac user interface. (The user guide says “Bewegen” but the actuall command is “Verschieben”)

Also, command names in Rhino aren’t always exactly the same as their description in the menu. You will find more examples like that in the future. Maybe we should have maintained a stricter coherence in the first place, you may be right about that.

As a technical writer I’ve been fighting these inconsistencies from day one, as a programmer I’m guilty of producing them.

To your list:

• “Drehen” → In English, they use “Rotate” and “2DRotate” where we have “Drehen” and “2D-Rotation” in German. I will adjust the tooltip to “Drehen” so that we have consistency.

• “Skalieren” → Same inconsistency in English. However, you should be able to find “2DSkalieren” also when typing in “Skali…” Does this not work?

It does, I was irritated that I get
Skalieren → 2DSkalieren
but
Drehen → 2DRotation (instead of 2DDrehen or 2DDrehung)
In the second case the main function is translated to german while the derived function uses a foreign word. As a result you won’t get 2DRotation if you type in “Dreh…”.

• “Rohr” → this is a technical inconsistency. With the “RohrAnKurve” (_Pipe) command, you can choose the “Deckfläche” (cap) in the options. If I am right, some buttons are like shortcuts for a command and a specific option. If you launch the “RohrAnKurve” command, Rhino should display the respecting help page (in my version, it does).

Right, there are two items in the drop down menu for _Pipe, one with flat cap, one with round cap. When I use these I don’t get the help text for _Pipe.
There is probably a bug in the parser that takes the current command and looks for the help text. The same problem is in the english version, should have tested that first and written a separate bug report.

Axel

How about renaming the future versions to be consistent but providing an alias to the old convention for backward compatibility?
I mean, some commands are added, some get dropped or are modified in newer versions. What’s the problem with renaming them for consistency and clarity’s sake?

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you all seem to speak better english than me… why not just use the english version?
(i kid, i kid)

Actually, that’s what I’m doing…

Plus you don’t have strange and inconsistent default key bindings like (Ctrl+A), which is bound to the Hide command in the german version. Even though it makes sense as the german translation is “Ausblenden”, it ignores the fact that basically every other application uses Ctrl+A for selecting all (“Alles Auswählen”).

Hi Hannes,

I will definitely have a look into those key combinations and change them where necessary. I strongly agree that the “basic” ones should follow the established conventions from other programs.

Regarding the renaming, I really prefer not to touch the core translations unless they are just wrong. Your approach with providing aliases is not a bad idea, however, would add a layer of complexity to the translation workflow (someone has to track all the aliases and make sure they always get implemented wirth every new build) that I really don’t know if it’s worth it.

Thomas

Which manual do you use and where exactly does the guide say “Bewegen”?

http://files.mcneel.com/rhino/5.0/docs/rh50_UsersGuide_de-de_20140610.zip
File PDF-Windows.pdf
page 61 (page number) / 69

Bewegen von Objekten mit Abstandswerten

Für den Befehl Bewegen werden eine Ausgangs- und eine Zielposition benötigt.
Sie können diese Positionen auf der Arbeitsfläche frei wählen oder in der Befehlszeile eingeben.

page 64 / 72

• Deaktivieren Sie Ortho.
• Klicken Sie im Menü Transformieren auf Bewegen.

page 227 / 235

Verwenden Sie Bewegen, Drehen und Skalieren oder andere Transformationen, um die Textobjekte innerhalb des Rechtecks so anzuordnen, wie Sie auf dem Zylinder erscheinen sollen.

Fügen Sie nach Belieben andere Kurven zur weiteren Dekoration hinzu.

The text is a link that leads to the german page for the command move:

http://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/5/help/de-de/commands/move.htm

Which says “Verschieben”.

Axel

Hi Axel,

thank you very much for your thorough reading and the error reports!

I just corrected the mentioned errors.

BTW: If you use Rhino for Mac, you can also use the [Rhino for Mac User’s Guide][1].

For more information regarding the Mac version, check out our wiki: http://wiki.mcneel.com/de/rhino/mac/home

Thanks again.

Thomas
[1]: http://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/5/usersguide/mac/de-de/Rhino5UsersGuide_Mac.zip

That’s fine, no more thinking about CTRL vs. CMD.

Just one thing:
If I extract the files on the command line I get filenames like:
Parallelfl%E4che.3dm
but when I open them via double click I get:
ParallelflÑche.3dm
When I look into the archive with Vim the Name looks correct.
Models/Parallelfläche.3dm

Anything you can do about that?

Axel

@dan Any idea, why the encoding of the Windows files is broken on the Mac? Is this supposed to work?

@Kielhora If I am correct, the “official” way to download the Mac models is through the main menu:

Hilfe > Rhinoceros lernen > Tutorialmodelle öffnen

However, those files aren’t localized yet.

Any idea, why the encoding of the Windows files is broken on the Mac? Is this supposed to work?

It’s likely that someone (on Windows) copied and pasted a UTF-32 encoded string as the file name. When it showed up on the Mac it has the wrong encoding. I have also seen some strange behaviors with umlauts in Subversion between Mac and Windows - mostly with material sample files (materials) with umlauts in German files - so it might not be purely human error. I propose we simply rename these file using UTF-8 encoded strings. Though this is not really a bug with Rhino for Mac, I’ve filed it as such (MR-1221) because it’s annoying for Mac users.