Authoring Tools and A Sadistic utility You'll probably try Anyway

Over the last couple of weeks I've been deep delving into linguistics and grammar parsing. Learned some great stuff about Sentiment Programming, and analysis strategy. In doing all of this I've gathered up a long list of software utilities which I'm now trying to catalog and comment on in case you would like to try some of these out. They were an amazing help, and I certainly would not have learned as much as I did  in the short time I gave myself to understand these areas of research.

What did I learn? Well I learned that the last couple of weeks was spent deep delving into areas of research about exactly the wrong areas. However, I never would have found the right area if I didn't go there.

I also learned some useful aspects of Sentiment, and Big Data, both of which I'll be posting on as well over the next couple of weeks.


This first list is a collection of some Authoring software which I have enjoyed on various levels. Gir will show you the ones I find most useful.

Citavi

Citavi's core features are reference management, knowledge organization, and task planning.
Reference management

Website: http://www.citavi.com
Code license: Closed source
Last updated: 26 Feb 2015

VARD

VARD 2 is an interactive piece of software produced in Java designed to assist users of historical corpora in dealing with spelling variation, particularly in Early Modern English texts. The tool is intended to be a pre-processor to other corpus linguistic methods such as keyword analysis, collocations and annotation (e.g. POS and semantic tagging), the aim being to improve the accuracy of these tools

Website: http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/vard/
Code license: Open source, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike-Noncommercial
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

4th Dimension 

4th Dimension is a graphic environment for developing database-driven single-user, client/server and Web applications.
Website: http://www.4d.com/products/4d2004/4dstandardedition.html
Code license: Closed source
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

MUSE

Muse has a line comment system which allows anyone to comment in the body area, but keeps the line comments from the eyes of other viewers, showing them only to the owner of the document, making it perfect for crowd editing and beta readers

Website:https://www.themuse.com
Code license: Closed source
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

Freedom

Freedom is the amazing little app for Windows and Mac computers that locks you away from the 'net for up to eight hours at a time. At the end of your time offline, Freedom allows you back on the internet.

Freedom enforces freedom; you'll need to reboot if you want to get back online while Freedom's running. The hassle of rebooting means you're less likely to cheat, letting you focus on work. --
at least that's the idea.

Website: http://macfreedom.com/
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

writeLaTeX

WriteLaTeX is a free service that lets users create, edit and share their scientific ideas easily online using LaTeX, a comprehensive and powerful tool for scientific writing. Users can start projects with quality LaTeX templates for journals, CVs, resumes, papers, presentations, assignments, letters, project reports, and more.

Website: https://www.overleaf.com/
Code license: Closed source
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

Evernote

Evernote is note-taking software in the cloud, with options for private and shared notebooks. Users can take text notes, and upload files to attach them to notes. Evernote has built-in OCR for images with printed or handwritten text. A premium account allows access to notebooks offline, as well as more storage and embedded PDF search.

Website: https://evernote.com/
Code license: Closed source
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

Scrivener

Scrivener is wonderful writing platform that includes virtual index cards, outlining, version control, import/export options, and scriptwriting features, and provides a management system for notes and documents plus support for document metadata.

It allows the creation of documents from sub documents, ebook (epub and Kindle/mobi) and TeX and LaTeX export as well as ODF, PDF and Microsoft Word exports.

Website: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
Code license: Closed source
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

ICE (Integrated Content Environment)

Integrated Content Environment (ICE) was an open source project of the Learning Resources Development (LRD) unit at the University of Southern Queensland. The content management system allowed users to convert content authored in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org Writer into self-contained course websites using the IMS format.

The online application comprises of a repository component built on MarkLogic (TM) which is an XML database. These components provide mechanisms for (a) Content Tagging, (b) Versioning, (c) Search, and (d) Project Spaces.

LearningMate ICE is an authoring and development workflow management system that enables authors to author content for the online product using Microsoft Word as the authoring environment. The core aspect of ICE is a custom toolbar within these Word templates that enable authors to preview their content in the format as it would appear in the final product. ICE also enables encapsulation of the authoring process from the media development process. This ensures that different profiles working as part of a product development process in ICE are able to contribute effectively through the workflow management system that ICE enables. In addition to this, ICE enables a comprehensive content repository that is powered by Marklogic XML database server. Marklogic enables extensive tagging, taxonomy, and powerful search features.

The Project Spaces made available as part of the online application allow for import from and export to specific formats/packages. Authoring features are exposed through MS Word using word macros that interact with web services exposed by the online application. All content created using ICE is stored in XML. All the binary media content is stored as is in the filesystem.

Website: http://www.usq.edu.au/ict/training/online/ICE
Code license: Open source, GNU GPL
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

Sophie

Sophie is an electronic tool for authoring, collaborating, reading, and publishing rich media documents in networked environments. Built in Java it runs on a variety of platforms.

It does not support either the epub or mobi formats instead using its own internal format.

Website: http://sophie2.org/trac/
Code license: Open source, Educational Community License (ECM)
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

QuarkXPress

QuarkXPress desktop publishing software is commonly used to create page layouts for a variety of print publications such as books, newspapers, magazines, posters and brochures. Similar in function to InDesign, the main differences are Quark's unique features for exporting documents as interactive webpages as well as its widespread use by printers, typesetters and page designers.

Website: http://www.quark.com/
Code license: Closed source
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

Blogger

Blogger is simple blog publishing software owned by Google.

Website: http://www.blogger.com/home
Code license: Closed source
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

Edublogs

Edublogs is an educational blogging service for teachers and students to create, manage, and publish on their own WordPress sites. Provides cloud hosting and a simplified interface, as well as additional account options at the university level.

Website: http://edublogs.org/
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

Tumblr

Tumblr is a blogging/microblogging platform with a focus on data sharing between individual blogs. Users can create and disseminate data in a visual or HTML editor, using standard Tumblr posting formats: text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio, and video.

Built-in customization tools allow users to manipulate the appearance of their blog with little knowledge of web development. Tumblr also provides a CSS/HTML customization panel for more advanced users, including theme documentation and the ability to upload/alter theme asset files (e.g., CSS, JS).

Website: https://www.tumblr.com/
Code license: Open source
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

TypePad

TypePad is a commercial, fully hosted blogging platform. Provides library of customizable blog designs.

Website: http://www.typepad.com/
Code license: Closed source
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

Google Docs

Google Docs is an online environment for editing and sharing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, drawings, and tables. Google Docs documents can be public or private, or shared with anyone with a Google account, e-mailed, or downloaded in various formats, including conversions to PDF and other formats not identical to the original or to the proprietary format used at creation. Designated people with whom items are shared can be given permission to comment or edit the files, thus providing a quick way to collaborate on creating and editing documents and presentations.

Website: https://docs.google.com
Code license: Closed source
Last updated:25 Feb 2015

Anastasia

A software application that enables a user to search, manipulate and publish large SGML/XML documents. Anastasia was developed within an academic context to enable the manipulation of a single, large mark-up documents or a set of documents. It utilises two methods to interpret the structure of a mark-up document: First, it uses pattern-matching algorithms to process a hierarchical tree, similar to other XML software applications; Second, it interprets the document structure as a series of sequential 'events' which must be processed.

Website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/anastasia/
Code license: Open source, GNU GPL
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

NoodleTools

MLA, APA, Chicago / Turabian and most-common Bluebook forms as an integrated citing and note-taking platform for individual or group projects. Prompts for analysis of source types and is unique in offering teaching support and personal help on any citation. Instructor / librarian view allows teacher to comment on work-in-progress providing just-in-time feedback in-context. Archives copies of web pages and pdfs which can be annotated. Dashboard provides long-term access to a portfolio of work.

The single license is only $15, but you might want to look into Zotero before you buy.

Website: http://www.noodletools.com/
Code license: Closed source
Last updated:25 Feb 2015

WriteRoom

WriteRoom is an alternative to Microsoft Word, that removes distractions on your computer while you're writing. WriteRoom is a full screen writing environment that has certain functions like word count and autosave. WriteRoom for iOS is synced with Dropbox, and your iPhone/iPad/iPod touch.

Website: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom
Code license: Closed source
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015

Docear

Docear began life as a MindMap (FreeMind) and became much more as functionality for serious academic research was added to the FreeMind, which evolved into a package they called FreePlane, which then added some reference and documentation ability from JabRef  and eventually became became Docear.

I use MindJet mindmaps all the time, and tend to return to them no matter what mindmapping program I test out. However, Docear is becoming my daily use program these days. With all of the add-ons and great functionality, MindJet simply isn't keeping up.

Website: http://www.docear.org/
Code license: Open source, GNU GPL
Last updated: 25 Feb 2015