I constantly find I need to do something pretty basic on a text file
without being able to do it in Word (or not knowing how). For example read
it and say make a copy but only using the lines which start with > (or in
the case of emails maybe do NOT start with >!).
Since I do know how to write computer programs I can solve the problem; my
colleagues and students mostly don't, and usually end up doing without, or
struggling for ages to get it done with a most unfriendly and inefficient
Word Basic macro.
To learn the simple basics, enough to know how to open up a text file, read
it line by line, effect some sort of changes or counting procedure on each
line, and save the results is not very tricky.
For what it's worth, my opinion is that the best solution would be a kind
of published mini-course, together with human feedback in the form of a
workshop. The published mini-course could be presented by Internet. The
feedback might need to be in two ways: by emailing the authors (who'd pay
them for replying?) and when enough folks got interested, organising a
proper hands-on seminar somewhere suitable. This need not be especially
expensive if a number of Corpus Linguists were interested. I would
willingly collaborate.
******************************************
Mike Scott, author of WordSmith Tools and MicroConcord
Applied English Language Studies Unit
University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX
http://www.liv.ac.uk/~ms2928/homepage.html
http://www.liv.ac.uk/~ms2928/wordsmit.htm