The functionality of CafeTran's target segment editor can be further extended by binding it with an external text editor. Some specialized editors offer additional functions that can enhance the editing experience. For example, a dictation application can be tuned to work best only with certain text editors. Currently, the following text editors are known to work with CafeTran's binding feature:

  1. Atom.
  2. BBEdit. Turn on the option in Preferences > Application > Automatically refresh documents as they change on disk.
  3. Jarte. Turn on "Silent reload" option as described here. If you are going to use Dragon Naturally Speaking with Jarte, please apply this fix.
  4. Notepad++. Install the Document Monitor plugin and activate the "Update silently" option in Settings > Preferences > MISC.
  5. Sublime Text.
  6. TextEdit.
  7. TextMate.
  8. WordPad.


 To bind CafeTran to your preferred text editor:


  1. Open or start a new translation project in CafeTran.
  2. Go to Edit > Preferences > General tab and select your favorite text editor from the "External editor" list. Click OK.
  3. Choose "Bind external editor" option in the Edit menu.
  4. In your external editor, open CafeTranBond.txt file located in the Documents folder under user's directory in your operating system (e.g. C:\Users\James\Documents\CafeTranBond.txt).
  5. Arrange the windows in your screen comfortably. If your monitor is small, you can use the "Detached windows" layout from the View menu to align CafeTran's interface with the external editor better.
  6. Start the translation. The matches inserted in CafeTran's target segment editor appear in the external editor as well. The editors are synchronized.
  7. Edit or dictate the translation in the external editor. Any source segment formatting tags can be transferred to the target segment via the pipe | character typed in the external editor. 
  8. Press CTRL+S (Command+S on Mac OSX) keyboard shortcut to accept the translation and move on to the next segment. If you do not wish to go to the next segment automatically, uncheck the AutoNext box in the target segment toolbar.