Foreigndesk, Open-Source(d) Computer Aided Translation

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

Dear All,
(I am not affiliated with the company, I just summarise to the list.
I also add personal comments.)

	Lionbridge is one of the companies that makes Computer Aided
Translation (CAT) products. There are many such companies and the market
of CAT is supposed to be a big one.
	In November ForeignDesk, one of the products of LionBridge was made
open-source and moved to SourceForge for further development.
The URL is: http://foreigndesk.sourceforge.net 
	This week there has been an updated press release since the program got
10000 downloads from SourceForge. It was mentioned in LWN as well.
http://lwn.net/bigpage.php3 (search for "ForeignDesk", before Thursday)
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-02-2002/0001698150&EDATE=
http://www.lionbridge.com/technology/p/782/l/1/content.html

What is included in ForeignDesk are (check press release for full
description): 
a) An integrated translation environment (translation memory,
terminology management, context viewing and translation support)
b) "DDL Workshop", which "allows users to add native support for new
file formats". I assume it can be used to translate SGML/XML
documentation files?
c) A terminology management application.
d) A project assistant.
e) An application to package a translation project in order to send to
someone else.

There is one glitch for the moment. It only runs on Win32. I am not sure
if someone can use Wine or easily port to wxWindows. Assuming it works
ok, perhaps a GTK+ port might be good.

I do not have experience yet with such CAT and I found it rather
difficult to use. Perhaps someone more exprerienced can give a more
thorough analysis?

Simos