Under Community Review

This is tracked in our internal systems as LTE-255.

Make case toggle shift+F3 default to word if nothing selected

In MS Office, Memsource and MemoQ until version 2015, Shift+F3 is a shortcut to toggle case. Unless I select some text, the toggle function will work on the word in which the cursor is, which is convenient in the majority of cases where I just need to toggle between no caps and initial caps.

Studio also has this toggle function, but it is much less efficient, because if I don't specifically select some text, it does nothing. It isn't smart enough to figure out that if nothing is selected, I simply want it to act on the word in which the cursor is.

It would seem a simple improvement to make. If something is selected, it should simply continue to work as it does now.

MemoQ's toggle function used to be the best, as it had an intelligent cycle order, predicting the most likely change, e.g. from initial caps to no caps, whereas Office and Memsource use a 'dumb' fixed cycle going from initial caps to all caps.

As of version 8, MemoQ now has the worst case change function of all, as they have scrapped the toggle function and introduced a menu that stops the user every single time they want to toggle case. This is why I dumped MemoQ. It is endlessly annoying and ruins my concentration. Please don't ruin Studio's toggle function in this way, but make it better.

Of course, if some users prefer a menu, that’s no problem, as long as it isn’t made mandatory for those who prefer a toggle function. One-size-fits-all solutions rarely work. The trouble with Kilgray is that they stubbornly refuse to listen to the users that want to keep the toggle function in MemoQ.

Thomas T. Frost

  • @Stepan Indeed. I analysed the three CAT tools mentioned and MS Office. Here are the results:

    Word/Outlook:

    Always the same cycle.

    Lacks "Blah blah".

    Works in word where cursor is if nothing selected.

    blah -> Blah -> BLAH

    Blah -> BLAH -> blah ('dumb')

    BLAH -> blah -> Blah

    blah blah -> Blah Blah -> BLAH BLAH (lacking: Blah blah)

    Blah blah -> BLAH BLAH -> blah blah -> Blah Blah

    Blah Blah -> BLAH BLAH -> blah blah (lacking: Blah blah)

    BLAH BLAH -> blah blah -> Blah Blah (lacking: Blah blah)

    Memsource:

    Always the same cycle.

    Almost the same as Word.

    Lacks "Blah blah".

    Works in word where cursor is if nothing selected.

    blah -> Blah -> BLAH

    Blah -> BLAH -> blah ('dumb')

    BLAH -> blah -> Blah

    blah blah -> Blah Blah -> BLAH BLAH (lacking: Blah blah)

    Blah blah -> Blah Blah -> BLAH BLAH -> blah blah (only difference from Word)

    Blah Blah -> BLAH BLAH -> blah blah (lacking: Blah blah)

    BLAH BLAH -> blah blah -> Blah Blah (lacking: Blah blah)

    MemoQ 2015:

    Only one of the four with a 'smart' cycle.

    Only fault: lack of "Blah Blah" if starting from "BLAH BLAH", but this can be obtained by de- and reselecting the words to start again from another point in the cycle.

    Works in word where cursor is if nothing selected.

    Best of all until wrecked by a menu in version 8 and later. Now worst.

    blah -> Blah -> BLAH

    Blah -> blah -> BLAH ('smart')

    BLAH -> blah -> Blah

    blah blah -> Blah blah -> Blah Blah -> BLAH BLAH

    Blah blah -> blah blah -> Blah Blah -> BLAH BLAH

    Blah Blah -> blah blah -> Blah blah -> BLAH BLAH

    BLAH BLAH -> blah blah -> Blah blah -> BLAH BLAH (lacking: Blah Blah)

    Studio:

    Always the same cycle.

    Lacks ability to work when nothing selected.

    Cycles exactly as Word.

    Lacking "Blah blah".

    Worst of the four if MemoQ version 8+ not included.

    blah -> Blah -> BLAH

    Blah -> BLAH -> blah ('dumb')

    BLAH -> blah -> Blah

    blah blah -> Blah Blah -> BLAH BLAH (lacking: Blah blah)

    Blah blah -> BLAH BLAH -> blah blah -> Blah Blah

    Blah Blah -> BLAH BLAH -> blah blah (lacking: Blah blah)

    BLAH BLAH -> blah blah -> Blah Blah (lacking: Blah blah)

    Studio's implementation is the least intelligent of them all. What I ideally want is how it was done in MemoQ 2015, with the one fault fixed.

    Of course, if users are used to Word/Memsource/Studio's 'dumb' cycle, it might not be a good idea suddenly to change

    Blah -> BLAH -> blah ('dumb')

    to

    Blah -> blah -> BLAH ('smart').

    The mistake Kilgray committed was exactly to change an existing behaviour that worked without consulting the users. That's a no-no for any experienced application developer and it also explained why Windows 8 was rejected by so many users. If there is a new and improved behaviour to propose, it's better to introduce it as an option. That way users that like the existing behaviour will experience no disruption and will not get angry about having the interface changed against their will. That Kilgray's developers have behaved like that and stubbornly refused to fix their mistake demonstrates a serious absence of experience amongst their developers and management and contempt for their users.

    The idea with IT is not to make everybody do everything the same way, as if they were robots, but to allow each one to adapt things to their own preference. That's how people get most productive. During the 20 years I worked as an IT specialist on IBM z/VM systems, I used an extremely specialised editor based on the pretty dumb standard editor, and no IBM software update ever wrecked that or changed the standard layout in any way. Improvements were optional.

    To make it even worse, Kilgray have made their server version 8 partially incompatible with previous versions of the CAT tool, so that you are flooded with error messages if you connect to a TB/TM on a MemoQ version 8 server from MemoQ 2015, whereas backward compatibility is a golden rule in IT whenever possible. However, they provide a Studio plug-in to MemoQ TB/TM’s, and it would be funny if that allows Studio users to use MemoQ TB/TMs better than MemoQ 2015 users.

  • Before they killed this feature, the mQ toggling cycle also included an additional step (in comparison with MS Word or Trados) when only first word within a multiple-word selection is capitalized. This is convenient when you have to apply more than one formatting changes to a trail of words. For example, when you need to apply italics to the entire phrase and capitalization just to the first word, you have to select the entire phrase first, then apply italics, then select the first word only and apply capitalization to it. If it was as it used to be with mQ, you could avoid two additional moves (1. re-select a word and 2. capitalize it individually).

  • Thanks for your comments, and for your suggestion, Nora. Now, I have no idea how to install that script, and I'm completely new to Studio after having defected from MemoQ, because their developers show no interest in improving things for translators. I guess I can google how to install a script in Studio. I'll have figure out so many things about it anyway. The amount of information is quite overwhelming when you just start, and I haven't really had a quiet moment to do it yet.

  • While this is implemented, you can also use AutoHotkey, I use a simple script that does exactly what you're describing. As a bonus, I use Alt-X as a hotkey, which is more ergonomic for me than Shift-F3.

    You can find it here: community.sdl.com/.../12955

    The thread also includes some other great script additions to deal with capitalization.

  • You are right. And I think in this context, that a lot of programs have similar problems, because during development no one really examine and let check out functionality by real clients. So the clients became human guinea pigs :-(