A text processor that searches xml (or pdf) files for a set of known target words.
I created this text processor as a way to help a friend with their English PhD thesis.
The Problem: There is a notion in English that the printing press (developed circa 1440) drastically changed the way people wrote, even down to the vocabulary used. The PhD candidate argues that this notion is overblown, that authors still wrote about pen, paper, ink, the act of writing, etc. However, they needed to sift through massive amounts of texts as evidence of this claim. They needed to search through texts before and after the printing press to see if the authors wrote about writing or printing and in what ways. Moreover, texts written in the 1400s are not very well kept, so they needed some heavy parsing.
Fortunately, the list of target words was already known as a basis for the thesis, but this text processor can be used for any list of words with some adaptation.