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A "Wiki Word" add-in for MS Word?
Armando:
Thank you for the suggestions! Sorry for the late feedback on this one. :-[
My brain is dead these days, and I didn't feel apt to follow up on that one.
Yes, exactly : I'm looking for something wiki-like, but for Word : putting a term inside [ ] (in my case, it would probably be [[ ]] to avoid confusion with comments) would transform it into a potential link -- as Iphigenie explained.
@tabletguy : I'm not sure how you'd transform the "Chinese tone marking converter" macro into one that would have a wiki bend...
The macro would probably have to :
1- Find the bracketed words
2- Create a database or index (or use an already existing one -- there are so many desktop search software around...) to contain all these bracketed words (the wiki words), and, of course, refer back to the exact spot in the documents containing the original bracketed words (a bit like tiddlyWiki, for example -- but I have no idea how tiddlyWiki does it...)
3- Rapidly find corresponding "normal" words in MS Word documents and link them back to the original (bracketed) term (thanks to the "wiki word" database/index).
...or something like that... I'm thinking out loud, of course.
I have no idea how complex that would be to code, or if it even exists. Maybe it does.
edit : the nice thing with wiki words is that your can quickly refer back directly to the definition you want for a specific term, without having to spend time looking for it manually into a data base (or, even worse, using X1, or something else...) -- it's not just mere linking similar words together, of course. Inserting tags-keywords (as textual strings) directly in the text could do the trick, I guess, but would certainly not be as elegant, and would be more complicated to handle with large quantities of terms/tags.
Armando:
And I wonder how the researchers here manage all their precious definitions (if not using a wiki system)... Of course, one can make his own independant dictionnary/database... But that's a bit different since there is no real automated linking involved.
Jimdoria:
I originally answered a different question, so I'm now changing my answer. :P
This shouldn't be too tough to implement in VBA, as long as you don't need anything too elaborate. Internal links (within the same document) could be managed as bookmarks in Word. External links (to other documents or bookmarks in other documents) might be tougher - I'd have to look into what is supported natively by Word's hyperlinking feature.
Word's got amazing linking/organizing capabilities if you poke around. Look in the help file for "bookmarks", "citations", "table of authorities" or "index entry."
EDIT:
Just checked. You can link to bookmarks within other documents using hyperlinks in Word. So it should be possible to create a web of deeply-linked Word documents - sort of a Word Wiki involving multiple document files. I'd expect the external links to be kind of fragile though - as in they might break if either the source or target document was moved to another folder.
Armando:
Just came back from a loooooong work day...
Thanks for your time Jim! I'll have a look at these different elements and try to figure out what's possible.
As you said, external links would be kind of fragile, but that's to be expected...
I'll post back my discoveries -- if any!
tabletguy:
I read something about a product called "ZuluPad" which sounds similar to what you want. Don't know if it would have an "export" to Word function, etc. but you could contact the author. There's an open source version (according to here: http://www.gersic.com/zulupad/) and a paid version. I don't know anything much about either program.
As far as rewriting the macro... Word already has internal linking, and the macro is doing text searching (but not efficiently). I thought you could just generate the links.
Actually, probably best to ask on one of Microsofts Word forums.
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