Tools & Tips

On this page, I am going to post some of the little tools I have coded in Freebasic (for 32 bit Windows), useful links and miscellaneous tricks that make my life easier.

Please note that I will take no responsibility for any content of external pages nor for anything that the programs I am making available here might do or fail to do on any computer other than my own.

Word Count from Clipboard

My first offering is a small app that counts the words of any text copied to the clipboard. Works on XP and should run under Vista and 7, but haven't tested that. 

Download it here

Just copy any text to the clipboard and hit the button. If you copy another text to the clipboard, click on "Add" to add the next count to the previous one. This is useful for counting words in Excel files, where some, but not all cells need translating.

I have got a keyboard shortcut assigned to it, so in order to get a wordcount, I just have to ctrl+c the text I want to count and then hit the hotkey.

Typing in German on an US/UK Keyboard

There is a nifty free little tool for typing German on an US or UK keyboard. In order to get an Umlaut, just hold the right Alt key and type the corresponding letter (e. g. right Alt + u = ü, right Alt + Shift + a = Ä etc.).


Couldn't be easier. You find it here.

Text Comparer

Pretty self-explanatory, see picture.

The differences are marked with <<< >>>. 

I find that useful to compare a text I have translated with the version that actually got published to see, what changes the editors have made - part of my continuous improvement process. 


Download it here