Bug 70978 - Word counter text is robotic, unnatural
Summary: Word counter text is robotic, unnatural
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: ux-advise (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
4.1.0.4 release
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Samuel Mehrbrodt (allotropia)
URL:
Whiteboard: target:4.2.0
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Word-Count
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Reported: 2013-10-29 01:19 UTC by Adolfo Jayme Barrientos
Modified: 2016-10-24 21:20 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Adolfo Jayme Barrientos 2013-10-29 01:19:56 UTC
Currently, the word counter at Writer’s status bar wastes space in a hugely unnatural wording:

   Words (characters): n (n)
   Words (characters): n (n) Selected: n (n)

LibreOffice should not speak like a robot. Transform this into:

   n words, n characters
   n words, n characters (sel.: n, n)

---
(This bug is already fixed in the Spanish locale, see https://translations.documentfoundation.org/es/libo_ui/sw/source/ui/app.po/translate/#unit=40233990.)
Comment 1 Samuel Mehrbrodt (allotropia) 2013-10-29 16:15:02 UTC
I'll have a look at this, sounds like a good change.
Comment 2 Samuel Mehrbrodt (allotropia) 2013-10-29 19:26:07 UTC
Maybe it's better to remove the "Selected" part.

This doesn't look good:
  120 Words, 607 Characters (Selected: 5, 34)

And this would be way too long:
  120 Words, 607 Characters (Selected: 5 Words, 34 Characters)
Comment 3 Samuel Mehrbrodt (allotropia) 2013-10-29 19:27:06 UTC
Also consider the flickering when you select something. The footer will have to be repositioned.
Comment 4 Adolfo Jayme Barrientos 2013-10-29 20:24:28 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> Maybe it's better to remove the "Selected" part.

No, that would be a regression (why did we add it in the first place).

Instead, when there is a selection, remove the whole document’s stats and only show selection stats. This is like what Office 2013 does, but better. So it would be:

   n words, n characters           (Normal)
   n words, n characters selected  (Selection)
Comment 5 Samuel Mehrbrodt (allotropia) 2013-10-29 21:23:04 UTC
Thanks Adolfo, that's a good suggestion. I've updated the patch accordingly: https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/6479
Comment 6 Thomas Arnhold 2013-10-30 13:02:02 UTC
Why not do it like Office:

Words: 20, Characters: 123           (Normal}
Words: 3/20, Characters: 34/123      (Selection)

That should be intuitive and easy to understand. Giving the number before the meaning (20 words) is not as easy to understand as vice versa (words: 20).

And it's the shortest variant :)
Comment 7 Adolfo Jayme Barrientos 2013-10-30 13:14:48 UTC
(In reply to comment #6)
> That should be intuitive and easy to understand. Giving the number before
> the meaning (20 words) is not as easy to understand as vice versa (words:
> 20).

Not as easy to understand? In which language? :-)

That does not sound natural, the point of opening this bug was to change the over-bracketed and over-punctuated string into something more grammatically correct.

(Also, words should all be lowercase, you don’t write a word in uppercase after a comma, and Title Case doesn’t fit here.)
Comment 8 Samuel Mehrbrodt (allotropia) 2013-10-30 20:24:29 UTC
I still prefer the suggestion from Adolfo. It's easier to read and understand.
Comment 9 k-j 2013-11-01 06:36:18 UTC
Why don't you write:

"37 of 200 words, 123 of 560 characters selected."
You get all informations in one sentence
Comment 10 Samuel Mehrbrodt (allotropia) 2013-11-01 08:35:58 UTC
@k-j: It's too long for the Statusbar.
Comment 11 Stefan Knorr (astron) 2013-11-02 15:57:20 UTC
Adolfo's suggestion sounds best to me too: it's focused, short enough and doesn't look like a fraction.
Only real con I can think of is that with that solution it is probably easier to create something ungrammatical in languages with multiple plural forms (like Russian). (I reckon the the translations for such languages are already ungrammatical in soem places, so it wouldn't be dramatically worse.)
Comment 12 Samuel Mehrbrodt (allotropia) 2013-11-06 14:17:10 UTC
So can we agree on Adolfo's suggestion?

   n words, n characters           (Normal)
   n words, n characters selected  (Selection)

(Should it be Upper- or Lowercase?)
Comment 13 Adolfo Jayme Barrientos 2013-11-08 13:34:40 UTC
Use lowercase, please :-)
Comment 14 Urmas 2013-11-13 21:46:28 UTC
That's stupid. The word counter should display the numbers, and do that fast. It should not sit there wasting time and power to reevaluate plural rules on each update.
Comment 15 Commit Notification 2013-11-15 10:11:10 UTC
Samuel Mehrbrodt committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=01af3e2efd4f7e0994340cb5b09c252323de63d9

fdo#70978 Improve Word Count display



The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds
Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 16 Michael Meeks 2013-11-15 10:13:29 UTC
Looks lovely - can't back-port to 4.1 due to string / translation changes => marking fixed.

Thanks so much Samuel / Adolfo & all for the nice polish ! =)