[OS X TeX] word count in pdf file

[Alan Munn]

On Jan 4, 2011, at 4:10 PM, Harry H. Hilton wrote:

> I  have searched the manuals and help areas regarding a procedure or macro for obtaining a word count of the the prose in the output .pdf file. Does anyone have any info? Thanks.


Word counting questions almost always lead to statements about its impossibility and/or uselessness.  However, if you use TeXShop there is an engine for counting words (texcount) in the ~/Library/TeXShop/Inactive/texcount folder.  Drag either of the engines out of its folder into the Engines folder, and you can use that to count words. To use it, choose it as the engine and then "typeset" the document.  It will open a web summary of the counts and how it did it.  It works off of the latex source, but is pretty good for most things.

Alternatively, just select all the text from the pdf and dump it into MSWord or OpenOffice.

Alan

-- 
Alan Munn
amunn at gmx.com