Thanks, all — I now understand that touch is so-far limited in Sonar.
What does exist is beautiful and makes life much easier — but the lack of touch for manipulating clips does seem odd. It would be a nice option to have.
Sonar's lack of customisation/user-shortcuts is also strange — at least for non-real-time controls (slice, nudge, etc), it should be very easy to add keyboard and even touchscreen and MIDI event binding: is it a philosophical decision by the software designers? Or a work in progress? I'll have to find out.
 
Fz1, thanks for the tip, will checkout the software now. If the large-tabet lets you down, Acer do a largish high-res touch monitor for around 250 euros/dollars. Angles almost flat on the desk, making console view an excellent mixing interface.
 
It's good to be back with Cakewalk after 15 years away (though I am missing Logic a little bit....)