As noted in
another thread, I'm currently working on a german translation of Sigil. While working on that a few inconsistencies came up that I'd like to point out.
The "Tools" menu. The usual german translation for "Tools" in menus is "Extras", having the exact same meaning as the english word "extras". This "Extras" has been around for as long as there is a MS-Word with a Tools-menu. Apart from the inconsistency between whatever is considered an "extra" and whatever might be a "tool", it has always been a list of assorted functions that Microsoft didn't find any better place to put. What started out as an innocent menu with just a few items became one of the biggest distractions when working with Word, because you had no idea where to search for a menu command. Quick example: "Word Count..." is that a tool? an extra? May be it's somewhere in File, because it works on the whole file? Or is that a view? You guessed it: It ended up in the "Tools" menu. Just like "Protect Document", which very clearly works on files. I could go on ranting for hours, but to get back to business: I'd like to see the Tools menu being reworked, or - if possible - actually to go away.
This is my approach on how it could be changed:
Even before writing this I had always wondered why it is Tools->Meta Editor, opposed to Edit->Metadata.
Likewise, I think "Tools->Split on SGF Chapter Markers" should be "Insert->Chapter Breaks at SGF Chapter Markers" - and while we're at it, the term "SGF" is distracting. "Insert Sigil Chapter Marker" and "Insert Chapter Breaks at Sigil Chapter Markers" make a lot more sense to me. (To be totally honest, I don't understand why anyone would want to insert markers first, and then turn them into breaks, when they could've inserted chapter breaks right away, but may be that's just me.)
"HTML Tidy" actually isn't a tool, but an editing option, I'm not sure where that should go - I think it belongs in the program preferences (which currently don't exist, but which seem to be coming our way in 0.5), or may be as a clickable indicator in the status bar as well.
The only item in the tools menu that actually *is* a tool is the validator. Since it works on entire files, I think it should go in the File menu. "File->Validate" makes a lot of sense to me, more so than "Tools->Validate" does. I assume that validating in the background would require a lot of coding and raise performance issues, otherwise an automatic validation would be a nice alternative that could turn such a command into a simple view that can be turned on and off.
For the time being I've translated the menu items to closely resemble their English original - including things like "SGF". The above is only a suggestion in which direction I'd like to see the menu structure going. I'd love to see other people comment on this, to see whether I'm alone in my resentment against the "assorted commands that didn't fit anywhere" menu.