The translator whose draft I'm correcting actually wrote:

hiding and showing hidden images
for
versteckte Bilder ein- und ausblenden

despite having translated "ausblenden" as "suppress" in the previous instances, which doesn't seem quite right in any case.

And then, below that, there follows:

"Versteckte Bilder einblenden"

Now, does that mean the images that are simply "versteckt", or "versteckt und ausgeblendet"?

i.e., doe it make ausgeblendete versteckte Bilder merely versteckt again, or does it actually make versteckte Bilder visible again?

You have a similar option for files in Windows Explorer: Any file can have an attribute "hidden", which means it is normally not shown. And then you can instruct your explorer to "show hidden files", which means it should temporarily ignore the "hidden" flag.

The German Windows Explorer names the option
Ordneroptionen / Ansicht / Versteckte Dateien und Ordner / Versteckte Dateien und Ordner ausblenden.

The English Windows explorer has
Tools / Folder options / View / Hidden files and folders / Do not show hidden files and folders.

If you like Microsoft's translation you have to judge yourself ;-)

I

"Versteckte Bilder einblenden"

That means that the application should show pictures that have the "hidden" attribute. It does not change that attribute, i.e. the picture itself remains unchanged by that action.

Following Versteckte Bilder einblenden
there is then
Verstecken rückgängig machen.

So, presumably the versteckte Bilder that have been eingeblendet are still versteckt, and the versteckung is then finally undone by Verstecken rückgängig machen. Ausblenden thus definitely seems to be a deeper form of hiding than verstecken.

Thanks Sven. So Versteckte Bilder ausblenden would be "hide hidden files" even though they have so far only been hidden, and the user has not yet been told that they can show hidden files without changing that attribute? That seems somewhat illogical to me.

Well, if your application follows the same logic as the DOS and Windows filesystems (among others) have done for the last 25 years, then there is some - admittedly strange - logic behind it:

The "hidden" attribute on a file means it should not normally appear in your file list. That is done
- for system files a normal user should not tamper with (but there is another attribute for the very same purpose as well).
- for files that are of no interest to the user during daily work and therefore should not clog the directory listings with too much information

But since there is sometimesa need to access these files, there has always been a means to list them anyhow. Remember, it is not forbidden to change those, you just normally do not want to.

On the command line, you look at these with parameters, like

dir c:\whatever /ah

to tell the computer to show the files this time.

Since we have no command line any longer, one now needs to tell the explorer in some options dialog if it should show them or not. Being an option, this setting stays on or off for a longer time, taking away part of the original logic behind the concept.

OK, I guess the programmer of this software probably adopted the same logic, although I'm still not quite sure how it actually works in relation to images. Never mind.

So are both "verstecken" and "ausblenden" hide and both "einblenden" and all opposites of "verstecken" show?

So are both "verstecken" and "ausblenden" hide and both "einblenden" and all opposites of "verstecken" show?

Yes. If you want to circumvent "hide hidden", you might and up with "do not show hidden", as MS did.

Thanks. What would you think of using "reveal"?