Links between the Tools and Other Applications
Contents
Linkage with Word Processors, Spreadsheets etc.
All the windows showing lists or texts can easily copy selected information to the clipboard. (Use Ctrl+Ins or Ctrl/C to insert).
Where you see this symbol, you can send any selected data straight to a new Microsoft Word™ document.
Where you see an URL (such as http://lexically.net) you can click to access your browser.
Links between the various Tools
The programs in WordSmith Tools are linked to each other via wordsmith.exe (the one which says " WordSmith Tools Controller" in its caption, and is found in the top-left corner of your screen). This handles all the defaults, such as colours, folders, fonts, stop lists, etc.
In general, if you press Ctrl+C in WordList or KeyWords you'll go straight to a concordance, computed using the current word and using the current files.
Each Tool will send as much relevant information as possible to the Tool being called. This will include: the current word (the one highlighted in the scrolling window) and the text files where any current information came from.
Example: after computing a word list based on 3 business texts, you discover that the word hopeful is more frequent than you had expected. You want to do a concordance on that word, using the same texts. Place the highlight on hopeful, hold down Control and press C. Now you can see whether hopeful is part of a 3-word cluster, or view a dispersion plot.
Example: after computing a key words database using 300 business texts, you discover that the word bid seems to be a key key-word, and that it's associated with company, shares etc. Place the highlight on bid, press Control-C and a concordance will be computed using the same 300 texts. Now you can check out the contexts: is bid a bid for power, or is it part of a tendering process?
Example: you have a concordance of green. Now press Control-W to generate a word list of the same text files. Press Control-K to compare this word list with a reference corpus list to see what the key words are in these text files.