Not Considering

Support more file extensions, like OneNote, in-design files, and PDFs with right formatting

More often than not, PDFs lose all their format when converted to xliff. Also, we cannot ask clients to adapt to the handful of file types accepted by SDL.

We should be able to work with any type of file that we receive from a client.

  • Studio does support InDesign files, I work with this every day, either as idml or as icml. Nobody supports indd files, which would not make a lot of sense either if you look at the size of an indd file- lots of stuff stored in there that is irrelevant to localization. If you want to avoid the indd->idml conversion, export all Stories to InCopy, and you have all text as icml files to translate with Studio and sweetly re-inject into the indd file.

    Pdfs are not editable files. Period. They are not meant to. They are only meant to display & print device-independently. You need to understand what they are and what they are not. If you can't get hold of the source file the pdf was generated from, your best best is IMHO to use Adobe Acrobat Pro and "export to Word", which usually does a fairly good job. But it is aways a bit of a messy conversion because pdf files are not meant to be used for anything but to display on a screen or print.

    I don't have strong opinions about OneNote.

    In general, Studio supports a very large number of file types plus you can develop your own if you are a programmer or want to pay one to do it. It has a very large user-base, so you might even succeed in crowd-funding such a project. But I should think you can get pretty far with what is available out of the box.

    Daniel