personal pages

Tools for Writing

These tools require Perl.
Fortunately, no matter what modern computer you run, there's a Perl for your machine. It's free for the download, free as in speech as well as in beer. It's open-source but it comes ready to install. Unlike BASIC, it runs pretty much the same on every machine. Unless the author took steps to make things look confusing, the program that the computer runs is human-readable. Comprehending it might take study, but you don't need to do that to run it, and anyway Perl only looks like a language based on line-noise.
It's wonderful. Go get it.

words Counts and lists the unique words used in a file. Useful for admiring your vocabulary and looking for typos.

t2h Convert a story from TXT to HTML and post it, or just stare at it in your browser. Best thing other than a prereader for giving you a fresh-eyes look at your writing. This avoids many embarrassments. Trust me on that.

htchars Filter out Microsoft tricky-character rubbish, and much of the filler crud that Word spews out as HTML. The result, if the input file is HTML, is simplified and much cleaner HTML, suitable for tipping into a site's templates. If the input is TXT, the result is un-Microsofted text that's less likely to embarrass you on the Net. fhtchars is a stdin/stdout filter version that works well with the jstar editor.

namesift Collect proper names from text files. Useful for building lists of characters.

fnr Find-and-replace according to a list in a file. Useful for combating Nermia Syndrome.

calpost Calendar-generation tool. Useful for plotting story events, planning dinner menus and the like.

These tools require Perl. Fortunately, no matter what modern computer you run, there's a Perl for your machine. It's free for the download, free as in speech as well as in beer. It's open-source but it comes ready to install. Unlike BASIC, it runs pretty much the same on every machine. Unless the author took steps to make things look confusing, the program that the computer runs is human-readable. Comprehending it might take study, but you don't need to do that to run it, and anyway Perl only looks like a language based on line-noise. It's wonderful. Go get it.
words	Counts and lists the unique words used in a file. Useful for admiring your vocabulary and looking for typos.
t2h	Convert a story from TXT to HTML and post it, or just stare at it in your browser. Best thing other than a prereader for giving you a fresh-eyes look at your writing. This avoids many embarrassments. Trust me on that.
htchars	Filter out Microsoft tricky-character rubbish, and much of the filler crud that Word spews out as HTML. The result, if the input file is HTML, is simplified and much cleaner HTML, suitable for tipping into a site's templates. If the input is TXT, the result is un-Microsofted text that's less likely to embarrass you on the Net. fhtchars is a stdin/stdout filter version that works well with the jstar editor.
namesift	Collect proper names from text files. Useful for building lists of characters.
fnr	Find-and-replace according to a list in a file. Useful for combating Nermia Syndrome.
calpost	Calendar-generation tool. Useful for plotting story events, planning dinner menus and the like.