Bug 136563 - Word count should add footnotes for selections too
Summary: Word count should add footnotes for selections too
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.0.0.3 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Footnote-Endnote Word-Count
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Reported: 2020-09-07 21:13 UTC by Andrew Debney
Modified: 2020-09-16 15:05 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

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Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Andrew Debney 2020-09-07 21:13:23 UTC
The Wordcount shows all words within a Writer document, including all words within Footnotes. But if I select a section of text that has a Footnote, the word count for the selected text does not include the Footnote words.

I am currently doing a Theology Degree and my college is validated by Manchester Uni which directs that an essay word count include Footnote words but not the title page or bibliography. So to find out how many words are in the essay part I have to find the word count for the title page and bibliography separately and deduct that from the document total.

This seems like an error where the footnote words are not included in the word count of selected text.
Comment 1 BogdanB 2020-09-14 10:08:44 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 2 Dieter 2020-09-14 14:38:55 UTC
Even if I select all (Strg+A), footnotes are not highlighted and therefor not counted. If you select only text in footnotes, word count works. Are you sure, that footnote text is selected (I couldn't find a way to select it with text in page)?

=> NEEDINFO
Comment 3 BogdanB 2020-09-14 15:41:58 UTC
I didn't read carefully all, I just tested with a word with a footnote and everything was fine in Document count, but in the reporter case would be not correct because he want selection count for a text with footnote.

Sorry about that mistake.
Comment 4 Andrew Debney 2020-09-14 16:54:53 UTC
I think you have understood what I was trying to say.

If I select text that contains footnote references in them, the words in the footnotes are not included in the selected text word count, just the words selected.

So the word count when selecting text that contains footnote references needs to include the words within the footnote references highlighted.


NB I am only mentioning footnotes as that is what I use. I assume that endnotes would also be part of this bug, but I don't use them so I don't know how they work.
Comment 5 Dieter 2020-09-14 18:36:31 UTC
Thanks for clarification. I won't consider this as a bug, because LO counts the highlighted text correctly. I can't see a reason why word count should include text, that is not highlighted.

So for me NAB.
Comment 6 Andrew Debney 2020-09-14 19:10:40 UTC
There is a problem with this.

If I highlight text covering more than one page, there is no way to highlight the text within footnotes without trying to select/highlight the text within the footnotes themselves.

Highlighting normal text over a page boundary ingnores any footnotes as they are not highlighted/selected even though the reference numbers referring to the footnotes have been highlighted.

If I try to highlight the footnote text it is very hard to do more than one footnote at a time, and when I do achieve it, I can only highlight the footnotes on one page at a time.
Comment 7 Dieter 2020-09-14 19:12:29 UTC
Yes, but that's a problem of highlighting footnotes and not a problem of word count.
Comment 8 Andrew Debney 2020-09-14 19:35:43 UTC
So if I want to find out the word count of the text, ignoring the front page, bibliography, and some other sections, I need to highlight the individual footnotes?

If I have a 20 page essay with 40+ footnotes, am I going to have to highlight each footnote individually on all 20 pages, and re-do that after each change to the essay to make sure I have the correct word count and not exceeded the essay word limit?

MS Word does it very simply. It includes the footnote words with the text selected if a footnote number is also selected.
Comment 9 Dieter 2020-09-15 06:04:48 UTC
I agree, that situation could be improved, but again: For me this is a problem with footnote selection and not with word count. So I suggest to open a new bug report with request for improving footnote selection.
Comment 10 Dieter 2020-09-16 07:32:42 UTC
I think this is more an enhancement request than a bug. There might be good reasons, why footnotes are not selected at the moment. But I would at least expect, that all footnotes are selected if cursor is placed in footnote and Strg+A is used.

cc: Design-Team
Comment 11 Heiko Tietze 2020-09-16 11:21:05 UTC
The actual request is to count footnotes rather than selecting it. 

This enhancement makes sense although the opposite is requested in bug 99189 (obviously in case of no selection). I recommend to split the numbers in the to-be-introduced word count dialog requested in bug 123083.

Could be something like

(o) All Text
( ) Selection
( ) Before Cursor
( ) After Cursor 
 
                 Words  Character
[x] Title           12        123
[x] Headings        92       1124 
[x] Paragraphs.   8977      65657
[ ] Header.        211       1332
[ ] Footer         896       6564
_________________________________
    Total         9084      67921

(round brackets for single choice options aka radio button, square for multiple choice checkboxes)


The workaround today is to do math with the selected vs unselected count.
Comment 12 BogdanB 2020-09-16 12:05:36 UTC
Heiko, a user may select a text with just 1 footnote, so we need wordcount footnote just for selection.
Comment 13 Heiko Tietze 2020-09-16 13:42:13 UTC
(In reply to BogdanB from comment #12)
> Heiko, a user may select a text with just 1 footnote, so we need wordcount
> footnote just for selection.

If you select text within a footnote the respective field makes just no sense and could be disabled. We do it like this right now.

Bottom-line of my comment was that messing around with the selection is the wrong way to go when it comes to the word count function.
Comment 14 Dieter 2020-09-16 14:23:53 UTC
Heiko, I still don't understand your idea. Footnotes are not part of the footer, so I can't see, where they are included in your draft of checkboxes. And still the problem reamins: If a selection of text doesn't include footnotes, you won't solve the problem with your draft. Word count for the whole text could be solved with your idea (and I support this enhancement) but not with text selection. But perhaps I'ver misunderstoo something.
Comment 15 Heiko Tietze 2020-09-16 14:40:04 UTC
Footnotes are not part of the word count yet but could be in future. And the idea is to count words in the footnote when the selection goes over "Hello¹ World".
Comment 16 Dieter 2020-09-16 15:05:22 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #15)
> Footnotes are not part of the word count yet but could be in future.

LO counts words in footnotes. Just insert a footnote in an empty document and you will see.


> And the
> idea is to count words in the footnote when the selection goes over "Hello¹
> World".

So no selection of the footnote itself is needed? If this is the idea, I understand  it.