Created attachment 111206 [details] Example of text statistics measured by Readability-Score.com PROBLEM DESCRIPTION: This is a proposal for a new feature providing text statistics in LibreOffice Writer. Currently, the Word Count tool measures only the number of words and characters. The new feature would expand the variety of statistics that Writer calculates. Specifically, I suggest the community consider developing and incorporating what I will refer to as Wopse and Tekstat. WOPSE: The name stands for "words-per-sentence" count, a tool measuring the average sentence length in a given text. Authors could use this tool to write more effectively by keeping their sentences shorter (e.g., at 20 words or less). Wopse represents the minimal enhancement to the current Word Count tools. Ideally, the community would develop Tekstat, which includes Wopse, too. TEKSTAT: Teksat (short for "text statistics") is an expanded tool that would provide the following statistics: -- Character count; -- Syllable count; -- Word count; -- Sentence count; -- Paragraph count; -- Characters per word; -- Syllables per word; -- Words per sentence; and -- Sentences per paragraph. USEFUL REFERENCES: Readability-Score.com -- A text statistics service is available at https://readability-score.com/. The website provides all the measurements that I have listed above as part of the Tekstat tool, except for paragraph count and sentences per paragraph. Other readability statistics are also available on the website. Text Statistics Project -- Readability-Score.com is based on an open-source project called Text Statistics. The code is available here: https://github.com/DaveChild/Text-Statistics.
That is good, but too English-centered. It is not of much relevance for the software intended for international audience.
A sure thing is it's not a bug.
(In reply to Urmas from comment #1) > That is good, but too English-centered. It is not of much relevance for the > software intended for international audience. Readability-Score.com may have been designed for English, but text statistics could serve any language. I speak and write in several European languages. Sentence length is particularly important in all of them. Question is how much those writing in languages other than English strive to keep their sentences short and understandable. For some, there might be less of a cultural and market expectation to write in plain language.
(In reply to Julien Nabet from comment #2) > A sure thing is it's not a bug. I certainly didn't think an enhancement request was the same as reporting a bug. But I was told to file the request here. (See question and answer on LibreOffice.org: http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/43907/words-per-sentence-wopse/.)
No problem Geteoar :-) It was just to explain why I changed the status of the bugtracker.
(In reply to Julien Nabet from comment #5) > No problem Geteoar :-) > It was just to explain why I changed the status of the bugtracker. Good! ;)
There might be written languages supported by LibreOffice for which sentence length has no influence on legibility. But they would be the exception that proves the rule. Authors in virtually all Indo-European languages could benefit from the ability to identify sentences longer than a certain number of words. Note, too, that this capability can be added to other word processing software. See, for example, https://word.tips.net/T003381_Finding_Long_Sentences.html
Although this might be treated as a separate enhancements, it would be much more useful if it were possible to highlight those sentences longer than a certain number of words.
Why can we not vote on this enhancement?
(In reply to Amblyo from comment #9) > Why can we not vote on this enhancement? Devs are either benevolent and they work on what they're interested in or work for a company (eg: Collabora) where the clients of it submit and pay for requests (bug fixes or enhancements). So you've got 2 solutions here: - either you know coding and you can give it a try - pay someone to do it.