They are based around common localisation industry standard file formats such as XLIFF and TMX.

The source and target segments are shown in order to give the translator the full context and they are directly editable.

The central part of the editor is the “Mini-TM”, a simple file-based database with all source and target segments from the current project, which is being automatically updated.

There is also a mechanism to display notes from the source documents (typically from formats like .po files or from other translators).

There is a back-conversion tool integrated into the editor which converts the XLIFF files to their original format.