[OS X TeX] Word count?

[Michael S. Hanson]

On Apr 19, 2004, at 3:59 PM, Matthias Damm wrote:

>> 	Is there a word count feature in TeXShop or Preview?  I have a 
>> journal submission with a strict word limit -- "including all text, 
>> figures, tables, and references" as stated in the letter I received 
>> from the editorial assistant.
>
> There is quite a number of tools which can do this via the services 
> menu -- they all will work in TeXShop and Preview.

	I installed WordServices as suggested, and discovered:

	1. NONE of the WordServices tools work with the final (PDF) document 
in Preview -- which isn't any surprise given one cannot select or edit 
text in Preview.  Still, it would have been ideal, and the above 
message had given me (false) hope....

	2. While the Summarize feature does work with a LaTeX document in 
TeXShop (once some text is selected), the word count is nearly useless 
as it does not count just the text, but all the LaTeX commands, 
commented lines, etc. in the selection.


	Thanks to some off-list help, I was able to get detex to work -- turns 
out it was in  gwTeX all along.  But for some reason (another message 
at another time) my path is badly formed, with non-existent directories 
(possibly detritus from an old, old version of i-Installer?).  
Re-installation on a different machine fixed the path problems 
(although introduced permissions errors that I documented here last 
week....)

	I know nothing of how to implement these things, but it strikes me as 
possible to use AppleScript to create a "Word Count..." script using 
'detex | wc -w' that could be called from the TeXShop Macro menu.  
True?

                                         -- Mike

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