Change of focus...

I can't guess what the developers actually intend but my experience is definitely that in the last few years Sonar has focused on being a digital mix console for the PC rather than a general purpose MIDI and audio editing tool. Almost all the significant features and additions have been aimed at people who track large blocks of pre-written audio and then want to tweak and edit it. The ProChannel, Drum Replacer, VocalSync, Mix Recall, Patch Points/Aux Tracks, Style Dials, tons of effects chains and templates, and more. What did we get for songwriters and arrangements? Onscreen Virtual Controller?, ...er.... some sample and loop packs... er... Pattern Tool perhaps... that's about it.
But perhaps worse is how this forum sees a constant churn of "how do I perform basic task <X> that is simple in <other DAW Y>", such as moving or copying a section of the song to somewhere else, or even just being able to delete a section of the song reliably. It comes up time after time and there doesn't seem to be any movement towards even fixing this basic functionality, never mind adding advanced features that songwriters would benefit from.
 
So, I'd say you can draw your own conclusions.
 

Anderton
It would probably be helpful if someone presented a specific list of desired functionality for songwriting. So far all I keep seeing mentioned is an arranger track a la Cubase, and a more sophisticated staff view. Also break these down into audio functions and MIDI functions. The other sense I get it most people are talking specifically about MIDI, but I could be wrong...

Cakewalk need to just start acting on some of the things that have been said over the last few years while they've been supplying mix engineers with new toys monthly. I don't think when we say 'songwriting tools' we mean low-level stuff like harmony generators or rhyming dictionaries or whatever. Personally, I just mean 'tools that let me use Sonar during songwriting', instead of the status quo where Sonar punishes you for changing a song once you've started recording it.
 
Yes, a proper arranger track like Cubase or Studio One would be great, and especially the S1 scratch pads, but even just something like the old Cubase Play Order system would be a step up, or just a more versatile loop system (allowing the equivalent of D.S. Al Coda and the like). Anything to work in a non-linear way, to let me see which sections go where, to let me quickly and easily double or halve the length of a section, to see how something is going to flow before committing to keeping that structure.
 
But even if they never did any of this, if they just fixed the editing so it was easy and reliable to quickly drag and drop sections around and delete from the middle of a track, lots of us would just use it that way. But even that is currently a real hassle.
 
And don't get me started on how hostile Take Lanes are to even the simplest of attempts to move sections within a song. If I have the audacity to move sections around where there are existing take lanes, boom, I get even more take lanes. Sometimes it'll spread what used to be 3 clips in one take lane out into 3 separate take lanes, just to be sure. It's a complete productivity disaster. People on here say "always work with the Take Lanes open and specifically record into a lane", so I do, and it gets progressively more and more unwieldy as Sonar creates more lanes without us asking for them, and they've steadfastly refused to add the old 'rebuild layers' that's been gone for seven years because f*ck songwriters who want to move things after they're recorded, right? Should have just written the song beforehand and recorded it into Sonar in full takes (because that's the only way that the comping feature acts in anything resembling a sane manner).
 
Cakewalk either need to address these flaws, or add new functionality that sidesteps them and provides a different workflow for songwriters.