Hi Chris,

A few thoughts on your suggestions:

Unknown said:

If you try to set up a single file translation but have forgotten to close the source after putting all the information in, Studio makes you start again rather than giving a ‘retry’ option to allow you to close the source doc and retry.

I think that as this workflow, single document workflow, uses the default settings that the effort to just open the file again is not a lot.  Your languages could be set by default, your TMs and Termbases set by default, and all the possible options on the project set by default.  So you should not have to go through a lot of settings again.  If you do, then perhaps you need to change your defaults or try working with project templates as this gives you the ability to have different settings already set up.  There is also another big difference and that is when you work with Projects a copy of the file is used instead and Studio probably doesn't care that you left it open and will prepare the file anyway.  The single document process works on the actual file you had open, hence the warning in the first place.

Unknown said:

Studio is markedly inferior to Word in its handling of text in the translation window
Spaces are not inserted automatically when text is dragged in the translation window.

Indeed, it's a translation environment and not a word processor ;-)  But I agree, there are small improvements that it would be good to see and we do continouosly look at these and implement when and where appropriate.

Unknown said:

If you accidentally choose too much text when underlining or marking as bold you can’t un-underline or un-bold.

This is sort of incorrect.  You can use Ctrl+Z to undo whatever you did, and if you display the tags you will be able to edit the formatting more clearly.  This article might be helpful for you:

I guess this won't satisfy your desire to have this work like MSWord, but this is a consistent way to work whether the files are xml, indesign, framemaker, excel, word ... or whatever.

Unknown said:

It would be useful to have a thesaurus in the target language (as does Word)

Try this free plugin (you can have a lot more than MSWord):

Unknown said:

In translation memories there is no ‘go to last page’ key. One would be useful for checking and amending the most recent changes to the memory.

This one I completely agree with. Unfortunately it's not as easy as it sounds or we really would have done this already.  But it has been on a list of requirements for a long time.

Unknown said:

In SDL XIFF files and the translation memory files there appears to be no way to identify a series of units for a single action (such as confirm) in the way it can be done in Microsoft programs by ‘shift + ↓’.

You just have to do this a different way.  Click on the number in the left hand column, hold down the shift (or control key) and select the ones you want.  Then right-click on the left column and select the action you require.  But I wonder why you would want to confirm them all in one go afterwards.  Seems to defeat the object of working with a Translation Memory in the first place to some extent.  You can also use various tools on the app store to do these sorts of operations across complete projects or multiple projects, even without opening the files.  You couldn't do that in Word ;-)

Unknown said:

When confirming changes in an SDL XIFF file the cursor moves down the document to the next unconfirmed translation unit but does not return to the top of the document even if units at the top are left unconfirmed when it gets to the bottom.

No it doesn't.  Would have to be an optional thing I think... first time I've ever heard anyone ask for that.  Would be interested to hear what anyone else thinks.

Regards

Paul