ProZ.com Translation Forums

Is the RTF file format still alive? | Yes

Samuel Murray — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:16:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: Is the RTF file format still alive?
Poster: Samuel Murray
Post title: Yes

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:
I was wondering how important RTF still is these days, with nearly all office file formats based on zipped XML.
Do you still receive source files in RTF format? [/quote]
Yes, some CAT tools export review files in RTF format (and agencies then send these to me), although I'm not sure if they are truly RTF files or simply DOC files with an "RTF" file extension, and I'm not sure if those CAT tools would accept the file back if it came back in DOCX instead of RTF. Also, as an aside, I sometimes get DOCX files with a "DOC" file extension.

Is the RTF file format still alive? | Widely used

kd42 — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:34:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: Is the RTF file format still alive?
Poster: kd42
Post title: Widely used

It is widely used in publishing and industrial applications, often a saver in DTP. Why do you ask?

Is the RTF file format still alive?

CafeTran Trainer — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 08:55:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: Is the RTF file format still alive?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer

RTF was once a very important file format, supported by Microsoft, Apple, and many other companies. In the CAT world, it was a significant intermediary file format for Déjà Vu and other tools.

I was wondering how important RTF still is these days, with nearly all office file formats based on zipped XML.

Do you still receive source files in RTF format?

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | URL shorteners

CafeTran Trainer — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 06:02:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: URL shorteners

[quote]Michael Beijer wrote:

(High-quality image here: [url removed] )

[/quote]

[url removed] or [url removed]

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Supervertaler for Word - Microsoft Word task pane add-in

Michael Beijer — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 21:55:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Michael Beijer
Post title: Supervertaler for Word - Microsoft Word task pane add-in

Hi guys,

I'm working on an experimental version of Supervertaler called Supervertaler for Word, which lives inside Microsoft Word as a task pane add-in. Take a look:

[url removed]

(High-quality image here: [url removed] )

Latest version:

[Edited at 2026-09-14 23:30 GMT]

[Edited at 2026-09-14 23:31 GMT]

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | IDML XML structure

Li-Hsiang Hsu — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:55:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Li-Hsiang Hsu
Post title: IDML XML structure

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

Well, formatting does matter, but it's invariant, so the formatting tags can be hidden.

[/quote]

Yes. But, I would look at the XML structure before doing anything. Just to be sure. 😉

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Formatting does matter

CafeTran Trainer — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 11:16:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: Formatting does matter

[quote]Li-Hsiang Hsu wrote:

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

[quote]Li-Hsiang Hsu wrote:

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

[quote]Li-Hsiang Hsu wrote:

Sometimes, a tag may correspond to a run - if it is your case, that will mean your segement is riddled with runs! It is weird.

Check the xml file of the text to spot the cause. You may need to clean Unicode or corrupted text before segmenting your text. 😉 [/quote]

It's real formatting in an IDML file imported in Trados. Fancy colours and bold formatting etc. [/quote] [/quote]
By grouping tags around invariant items like position numbers between brackets a much cleaner view can be achieved. [/quote]
… this is indeed a convenient way to handle tags. [/quote]

Well, formatting does matter, but it's invariant, so the formatting tags can be hidden.

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | If formating doesn’t matter…

Li-Hsiang Hsu — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 09:55:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Li-Hsiang Hsu
Post title: If formating doesn’t matter…

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

[quote]Li-Hsiang Hsu wrote:

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

[quote]Li-Hsiang Hsu wrote:

Sometimes, a tag may correspond to a run - if it is your case, that will mean your segement is riddled with runs! It is weird.

Check the xml file of the text to spot the cause. You may need to clean Unicode or corrupted text before segmenting your text. 😉 [/quote]

It's real formatting in an IDML file imported in Trados. Fancy colours and bold formatting etc. [/quote] [/quote]
By grouping tags around invariant items like position numbers between brackets a much cleaner view can be achieved. [/quote]
… this is indeed a convenient way to handle tags.

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Weeding the forest

CafeTran Trainer — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 09:19:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: Weeding the forest

[quote]Li-Hsiang Hsu wrote:

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

[quote]Li-Hsiang Hsu wrote:

Sometimes, a tag may correspond to a run - if it is your case, that will mean your segement is riddled with runs! It is weird.

Check the xml file of the text to spot the cause. You may need to clean Unicode or corrupted text before segmenting your text. 😉 [/quote]

It's real formatting in an IDML file imported in Trados. Fancy colours and bold formatting etc. [/quote] [/quote]

By grouping tags around invariant items like position numbers between brackets a much cleaner view can be achieved.

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | So you have no choice...just accept it

Li-Hsiang Hsu — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:51:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Li-Hsiang Hsu
Post title: So you have no choice...just accept it

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

[quote]Li-Hsiang Hsu wrote:

Sometimes, a tag may correspond to a run - if it is your case, that will mean your segement is riddled with runs! It is weird.

Check the xml file of the text to spot the cause. You may need to clean Unicode or corrupted text before segmenting your text. 😉 [/quote]

It's real formatting in an IDML file imported in Trados. Fancy colours and bold formatting etc. [/quote]

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Real formatting

CafeTran Trainer — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:35:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: Real formatting

[quote]Li-Hsiang Hsu wrote:

Sometimes, a tag may correspond to a run - if it is your case, that will mean your segement is riddled with runs! It is weird.

Check the xml file of the text to spot the cause. You may need to clean Unicode or corrupted text before segmenting your text. 😉 [/quote]

It's real formatting in an IDML file imported in Trados. Fancy colours and bold formatting etc.

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Needs Unicode cleaning?

Li-Hsiang Hsu — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:32:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Li-Hsiang Hsu
Post title: Needs Unicode cleaning?

Sometimes, a tag may correspond to a run - if it is your case, that will mean your segement is riddled with runs! It is weird.

Check the xml file of the text to spot the cause. You may need to clean Unicode or corrupted text before segmenting your text. 😉

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Tag salad

CafeTran Trainer — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 06:17:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: Tag salad

I'm missing a way to get tags out of segments like these:

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | aha

Michael Beijer — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:06:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Michael Beijer
Post title: aha

[quote]Joakim Braun wrote:

[/quote]

Interesting. Yes, this was what I was thinking of making. Of course, you could just use paragraph segmentation in a regular CAT tool, but this would not allow you to store the individual sentences as TM pairs.

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Interesting

CafeTran Trainer — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 10:05:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: Interesting

[quote]Joakim Braun wrote:

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

Though aiming at macOS this solution was created in Python rather than using Core Text et al. [/quote]

What I'm suggesting is not a better way to merge segments, it's editing them inline with full segmentation data preserved. This, with segment linking stored in style attributes of attributed text and drawing the overlays with the segmentation info, can probably only be done using platform-native text systems.

[Bearbeitet am 2026-09-01 10:01 GMT] [/quote]

Okay, I’ll wait for your proof of concept;)

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | But

Joakim Braun — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 10:01:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Joakim Braun
Post title: But

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

Though aiming at macOS this solution was created in Python rather than using Core Text et al. [/quote]

What I'm suggesting is not a better way to merge segments, it's editing them inline with full segmentation data preserved. This, with segment linking stored in style attributes of attributed text and drawing the overlays with the segmentation info, can probably only be done using platform-native text systems.

[Bearbeitet am 2026-09-01 10:45 GMT]

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Solution in Python

CafeTran Trainer — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:46:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: Solution in Python

Though aiming at macOS this solution was created in Python rather than using Core Text et al.

[url removed]

Hmm, incorrect splitting in the source segment. By the way, source segments can be moved freely around. The target follows.

And yes, this is span mode, Michael :). But I like the fancy name "Flow motion" more.

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Clearer

Joakim Braun — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:22:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Joakim Braun
Post title: Clearer

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Like this

Joakim Braun — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 07:59:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Joakim Braun
Post title: Like this

[quote]Michael Beijer wrote:

Back to your question, though: could you elaborate a bit on what you mean by "I'd like to be able to edit segmented text seamlessly in a word processor-like interface."? What do you mean by segmented text in a word processor? What would this look like?

[/quote]

So instead of a 2-column bilingual view, you'd get two side-by-side scroll-synchronized panes with all the text for each language concatenated together. Intended for people like me who find that CAT segmenting cramps style and speed.

(This would not be suitable for all material, but for longer sections of continuous text - perhaps you'd select a number of bilingual segments in the traditional view and have a command "Edit together".)

Under the hood, the segmenting would be preserved, and indicated by, say, light-gray borders. It's merely a different display mode for the same underlying data.

With Core Text (the MacOS text handling framework) it wouldn't be that difficult to do, and there will be similar technologies on other platforms.

(Added: the AI makes this much more complicated than it needs to be!)

[Bearbeitet am 2026-09-01 09:56 GMT]

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Some ideas for a non-grid CAT editor (courtesy of Claude)

Michael Beijer — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 22:46:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Michael Beijer
Post title: Some ideas for a non-grid CAT editor (courtesy of Claude)

I asked Claude to brainstorm some ideas on this, and it came up with some pretty useful stuff.

---

[b]Some ideas for a non-grid CAT editor[/b]

Michael asked me to read this thread and brainstorm some ideas for a non-grid-based translation editor – one where the translator can freely move target sentences around while the system keeps track of which source sentences they correspond to. Here are my ideas.

The core problem seems to be that the grid gives you two things at once: a place to type and a guarantee of coverage. Any non-grid editor has to deliver both, or people will go back to the grid. The way out is to stop treating the row as the [i]unit[/i] of alignment and treat it as a [i]display[/i] of alignment.

[b]1. Data model: sentences with identities, not positions[/b]
[list]
[*]Source sentences are immutable and each gets a stable ID (S1, S2, …), grouped under their paragraph/block.
[*]The target is a sequence of "spans" (a sentence-ish run of text), each carrying the set of source IDs it accounts for. Many-to-many is allowed: one span can cover {S3, S4}, and S5 can be covered by two spans.
[*]Alignment is therefore an attribute [i]of the text[/i], not a table. Moving a span moves its IDs with it; the order of the target is irrelevant to the alignment.
[/list]
This is essentially Joakim's Core Text idea, generalised: in Qt it's a custom character format property, in ProseMirror/Lexical it's a node attribute, in Word it's a content control tag.

[b]2. Never create alignment, only inherit it[/b]

Start the target as a copy of the source: each source sentence appears in the target pane as a greyed-out "ghost" span that already carries its ID. The translator then:
[list]
[*]types over a ghost (the text inherits the ID),
[*]drags ghosts or translated spans around, before or after translating,
[*]backspaces across a boundary to merge (IDs are unioned),
[*]uses a split command inside a span (IDs are divided – see point 4).
[/list]
Because provenance is tracked through editing operations rather than reconstructed afterwards, it almost never goes wrong. It's the old Workbench "copy source" reflex turned into the whole architecture. LLM pre-translation just fills the ghosts in place, IDs untouched.

[b]3. The paragraph as the container of freedom[/b]

Let sentences move freely [i]within[/i] a block, but keep blocks 1:1 with source blocks (headings, table cells, list items). This is where the great majority of real reordering happens (clause and sentence order within a paragraph) and it sidesteps the tag/layout nightmare: inline tags become draggable atoms inside the block, and block-level formatting is never in play. Cross-block moves can exist as an explicit, confirm-required operation.

[b]4. Repair, don't require: background alignment as a safety net[/b]

When a span is split or pasted from elsewhere and the IDs are ambiguous, run a scoped aligner (sentence embeddings, or a cheap LLM call – the scope is one paragraph, so it's fast) to propose which IDs go where. Show proposed links dashed, user-confirmed links solid. The aligner only ever fixes a paragraph; it never aligns a document.

[b]5. Replace "rows" with "coverage"[/b]

Michael's stated reason for going back to the grid is that he can see whether he's missed anything. So compute it: a source sentence is [i]covered[/i] if at least one non-ghost span carries its ID. Then:
[list]
[*]in the source pane, uncovered sentences stay bold and covered ones fade,
[*]a coverage bar per paragraph and per document,
[*]a shortcut for "jump to next uncovered source sentence",
[*]export is blocked (or at least warns) while coverage is below 100%.
[/list]
That's the grid's real guarantee, delivered without rows.

[b]6. Bidirectional highlighting and a "follow mode"[/b]

Cursor in a target span → its source sentences light up; click a source sentence → the target spans covering it light up. And a toggle that re-sorts the [i]source pane[/i] into target order, so a reviewer can read linearly even though the two orders differ internally. That one toggle is the difference between "I trust this" and "I can't check this".

[b]7. TM: store the paragraph pair and the derived sentence pairs[/b]

Sentence-level TMX can't represent reordering honestly. Store units as (set of source sentences, set of target spans) plus the full paragraph pair. For leverage: paragraph-level match first (catches reordered content perfectly), sentence-level fuzzy as fallback. Export flattened TMX for other tools.

[b]8. Interchange: XLIFF 2.0 already supports this[/b]

XLIFF 2.0 has an "order" attribute on the target element precisely so that target segments can appear in a different order from source segments within a unit, and it has canResegment for merge/split. So the export format exists – nobody uses it because no editor produces it. For round-tripping with Trados/memoQ, the pragmatic path is paragraph segmentation on their side, with sentence-level provenance kept internal and re-derived on import.

[b]9. Word as the editor (the MetaTexis route, modernised)[/b]

If you want to try this inside Word rather than a custom editor: content controls with a tag like "sv:S12,S13". Word preserves content controls through cut/paste and drag, they survive Save, they work in Word Online, and they can be made invisible. Deleting a boundary between two adjacent controls is the merge trigger, and the add-in repairs on the ContentControlOnExit event. Fragile in all the ways Word is always fragile, but it would give you flow, reordering and provenance in a week rather than a year.

If I were prototyping this, I'd start with 1, 2 and 5 only: ghost spans with inherited IDs, drag-to-reorder within a paragraph, and the coverage indicator. If that combination doesn't keep a translator out of the grid, nothing will.

Claude (Anthropic)

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Beyond the grid – tools that tried a document view (and why I keep going back)

Michael Beijer — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 22:33:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Michael Beijer
Post title: Beyond the grid – tools that tried a document view (and why I keep going back)

[quote]Joakim Braun wrote:

The CAT tools I've tried seem to be designed from a shaky spec sheet by engineers who don't use it themselves on a daily basis.
Mid-1990s style UIs with a boatload of toolbar icons, absent basic functionality available in mainstream apps, stability problems with alpha-level debug messages etc.

On topic: I'd like to be able to edit segmented text seamlessly in a word processor-like interface. This shouldn't be too hard to do for a company having the rest of the infrastructure in place (it could be done working with native text systems at OS level, such as Core Text on macOSX). But row-by-row segmenting is everywhere...

(Added:) In Core Text, you could use character attributes to store segment info, and custom drawing to add a border and any other decoration to the active segment where the cursor is. There'd be an optional source pane with synchronized scrolling and a similar indication of the active segment. On editing, the segment would update using callbacks. If segment limits are overwritten/deleted, it would be treated as a segment merge. Tables should of course be displayed as simple, spreadsheet-like tables.

WYSIWYG wouldn't be possible and there would be a lot of difficult decisions about which segments to display as paragraphs, table cells and inline text. But a basic functionality shouldn't be too difficult to add to an existing native-running CAT tool. Getting away from segment views when desired would be a huge improvement.

[Bearbeitet am 2026-08-27 06:59 GMT] [/quote]

Hi Joakim,

This is an interesting idea and one I have been thinking about for years. However, I have never come up with a satisfactory solution. I've tried various CAT tools that take a different approach than the well-known grid, but I always end up back in the grid because you can easily see whether you've missed anything.

Some tools I have used in the past:

- Trados Translator's Workbench
- Wordfast Classic
- MetaTexis
- Felix (by Ryan Ginstrom; Felix took a very interesting approach. He would basically open a Word document, and whenever your cursor was in a sentence and you clicked a special shortcut, a little TM search thing would pop up.)
- Anaphraseus
- LogiTerm Pro

I also experimented with various "views" in Supervertaler Workbench ( [url removed] ), most of which have been removed in the last version of the tool. At one point I had
- a standard Grid view,
- a Table view (sort of like a spreadsheet with all sorts of columns with different types of information),
- a preview,
- and a special Document view (where I tried to basically make a preview window editable)

That last one was as close as I ever got to something that almost worked.

I also experimented with one of TransTools' bilingual document tools, where you click a button in Microsoft Word and TransTools would convert the monolingual text into bilingual text in a table. You then work your way through the document, translating the target side, and afterwards click a button and the bilingual text would be cleaned up, leaving the monolingual behind.

Back to your question, though: could you elaborate a bit on what you mean by "I'd like to be able to edit segmented text seamlessly in a word processor-like interface."? What do you mean by segmented text in a word processor? What would this look like?

I'm taking a break from my more experimental development work on Supervertaler Workbench because I am focusing on Supervertaler for Trados, as well as a soon-to-be-released Supervertaler for memoQ, but I would like to have another go at creating some kind of non-grid-based translation tool.

Michael

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Full screen distraction free view

CafeTran Trainer — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 19:30:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: Full screen distraction free view

Added this: [url removed]

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Reshuffling

CafeTran Trainer — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 14:54:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: Reshuffling

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

Next step: preventing the re-segmentation. Rearrange directly in the paragraph.

[Edited at 2026-08-29 12:31 GMT] [/quote]

Here it is: [url removed]

Would be nice if this would be available in Trados too.

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | On my way

CafeTran Trainer — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:30:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: On my way

[quote]Joakim Braun wrote:

Intuitive and appealing (but there should be visual drag and drop feedback. On MacOS, you'd have a drag image and rows animating as the cursor moves, or a horizontal insertion line indicating where the selection moves to).
[/quote]

I added that later. Next step: preventing the re-segmentation. Rearrange directly in the paragraph.

[Edited at 2026-08-29 12:31 GMT]

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Looks good!

Joakim Braun — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 10:14:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Joakim Braun
Post title: Looks good!

Intuitive and appealing (but there should be visual drag and drop feedback. On MacOS, you'd have a drag image and rows animating as the cursor moves, or a horizontal insertion line indicating where the selection moves to).

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Flow motion

CafeTran Trainer — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 09:12:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: Flow motion

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

I've added Flow mode to Simpelvertaler (the little brother of Michael's no longer actively developed Supervertaler): [url removed]

Note that this is only an initial draft with basic UI elements, not yet styled for macOS. And the rearranging of rows should be more intuitive and via drag and drop. The merging of multiple rows should be able by clicking with the mouse on the row number while the Cmd key is pressed.

This reshuffling and combining/splitting of rows has to be as flexible and intuitive as in a word processor.

[Edited at 2026-08-28 12:46 GMT] [/quote]

I've renamed the feature to Flow motion :).

It now has a more intuitive approach and a more word processor-like clean look: [url removed]

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Unclear

Joakim Braun — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 15:25:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Joakim Braun
Post title: Unclear

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

[quote] [url removed] wrote

(snip)
[/quote]

So it's actually about changing how TUs are stored in the TMX, not about reshuffling, combining or splitting segments in the source and/or target document. [/quote]

Sounds rather like a display/editing convenience: "In Transit, segments which are ‘virtually’ joined in this way form a single unit, thus allowing the content to be translated according to requirements. However, the number of segments remains unchanged, meaning that the segmentation of all language pairs is still uniform. ". So not clear what happens at the target generation stage.

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Flow mode

CafeTran Trainer — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 10:21:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: Flow mode

I've added Flow mode to Simpelvertaler (the little brother of Michael's no longer actively developed Supervertaler): [url removed]

Note that this is only an initial draft with basic UI elements, not yet styled for macOS. And the rearranging of rows should be more intuitive and via drag and drop. The merging of multiple rows should be able by clicking with the mouse on the row number while the Cmd key is pressed.

This reshuffling and combining/splitting of rows has to be as flexible and intuitive as in a word processor.

[Edited at 2026-08-28 12:46 GMT]

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | I misunderstood

CafeTran Trainer — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 05:25:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: CafeTran Trainer
Post title: I misunderstood

[quote] [url removed] wrote

How do I virtually join segments?

1 Enter the translation into segment 26 and mark the segment as ‘Translated’ using ALT+INS.

2 Delete the text ‘Transit will boost your productivity’ in segment 27 and mark this segment as ‘Translated’ with ALT+INS as well:

3 Place the cursor in the segment which contains the translation (seg. 26) and select the option Virtual segment join from the context menu.

Transit joins the active segment and the following segment to become a single unit:
[/quote]

So it's actually about changing how TUs are stored in the TMX, not about reshuffling, combining or splitting segments in the source and/or target document.

What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools? | Looks cumbersome

Joakim Braun — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:34:00 +0000

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What's the #1 feature you've been missing in CAT tools?
Poster: Joakim Braun
Post title: Looks cumbersome

[quote]CafeTran Trainer wrote:

Have you ever tested the virtual segments feature in Transit NXT? These allow defining your own segments, leaving the underlying imported document untouched. [/quote]

Haven't tried, but the workflow is described like this:

[quote] [url removed] wrote

How do I virtually join segments?

1 Enter the translation into segment 26 and mark the segment as ‘Translated’ using ALT+INS.

2 Delete the text ‘Transit will boost your productivity’ in segment 27 and mark this segment as ‘Translated’ with ALT+INS as well:

3 Place the cursor in the segment which contains the translation (seg. 26) and select the option Virtual segment join from the context menu.

Transit joins the active segment and the following segment to become a single unit:
[/quote]

Pretty much all I dislike about CAT, including the bilingual segment view and general Windows 3.1 optics.

I'm thinking of paired segment-free panes which work like a word processor. It just means the same data is optionally presented inline instead of as a bilingual table. Wouldn't suit all documents, of course.