martin wrote:I'll file a feature request that this should be language dependent (ie: change the translation based on the language applied to the inserted cross-reference), and that the words used for each language should be customizable by the user in NWP's preferences.
Hi Martin,
I’m back to Nisus, 4 years after my original post above, and this time I even purchased it
Thanks to the introduction of a
proper hyphenation system with Nisus 2.0.3 in 2012 I now can use Nisus also for languages other than English. This is a good thing for a multilingual word processor, and the hyphenation seems to work really great
I completely forgot about the “above“ issue. When I stumbled upon my old thread here I was absolutely confident that this had been solved somewhere in the course of the last years, so my surprise was quite big when I learned that it hadn’t.
I literally didn’t
want to believe that I still have to switch the interface language in order to prevent Nisus from placing English words into my German or French text, so … I searched for the location of these “above” constants, and I found them in the
Localizable.strings file inside of the
.lproj folders in the app bundle.
Heck, I’m sure you know that this file is meant for static interface elements of an app, but certainly not for document content stuff!
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Apparently the issue is still on the very bottom of your todo list, if at all. But, by the way, even clumsy old Word gets this right! So you don’t want to tell me that your devs are not capable getting this done, too
Or maybe you are not completely aware how non-sensical the current implementation is?
An example:
[Skip this example if you already know the workflow.]
I regularly have to work with texts in German, French and English. Not even mixed languages in one document, just language versions of a text in separated documents. You see, nothing exotic.
My Nisus interface (as well as the whole OS) is set to English, that means I can work with these cross references in English document without any precautions. Fine.
However, before opening the French or German document – or
at latest before producing a PDF – I have to switch Nisus’
interface to the corresponding language and relaunch. Crazy!
And even worse, I have to repeat this everytime I do a minor correction in one of the documents, since upon opening a document Nisus resets the “above” words according to the current interface language!
[End of example.]
OK, since I know about these mechanics I won’t use “above” words in cross references. But it gets dangerous if you are co-working with somebody who uses Nisus with a localized interface and thus isn’t aware of the pitfall. If I forget to double-check the files I receive from him, I run the risk of ending up with literal “above”s in the French PDF.
Sorry for the longish text, but this is such a blatant dysfunction that really should be taken care of.
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Here’s a
proposal how to implement it in a sensical (and pragmatic) way:
- Take the “above” localizations out of Localizable.strings, obviously.
- I’ve seen Nisus now has “Language Sensitive QuickFixes”. This is great. Take that opportunity to store special variables there with the abbreviations “__above”/“__below” and the language-specific translation as expansion text. This has the additional, huge advantage that it’s user-configurable! (See addendum below.)
- Call that variable when an “above” cross reference is inserted.
Thanks for reading (and maybe considering),
Tom
PS: Don’t take this as a rant! I really fell in love with NWP 2.1.2, and that’s why this issue strikes me almost emotionally
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Addendum:
Your current German translation of
above/below is ‘obenstehend’/‘untenstehend’. This is
barely usable, since it’s an adjective that only works well in its inflected form and in an attributive role. The right translation is ‘oben’/‘unten’. This is basically a local adverb and can be used in a flexible way, as attribute or alone. (Word uses it too.)
By the way, as
ljegou already
pointed out in December 2012, your French ‘en-dessous’/‘au-dessus’ seems wrong to me, too.