[IAEP] Adding a word-count to write

[Eben Eliason]

On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Gary C Martin<gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
> Hi Martin,
>
> On 18 Jul 2009, at 22:58, Martin Sevior wrote:
>
>> We do not expose the underlying code to extract the numeric value of
>> the word count from a document at present. It would trivial to add
>> that to the API if there was consensus this would be a useful thing to
>> do. Now is a good time to put in such requests because we're just
>> finishing off the 2.8 release.
>>
>> However you can pop up the AbiWord modeless Word Count dialog by doing:
>>
>> self._abiword_canvas.invoke_cmd("dlgWordCount","",0,0)
>
> Thanks. Just added this as a toolbar button to test. For those interested,
> here's what it looks like in Sugar. With Sugars fullscreen interface design,
> the use of dialogues is rather finicky as it's easy to loose the dialogue
> behind to the desktop background layer:
>
>
>
>
>> This will give you document statistics as you type.
>>
>> I can imagine that having the word count auto-updating in the toolbar
>> would be a neat little feature
>> for the Write 0.86. It might one of those "high ceiling" features for
>> users to discover.
>>
>> One might also think of "find", "replace" and "goto" all being
>> implemented in the toolbar.
>
> FWIW, "find" is available under the Edit tab (but no "replace"
> functionality), and "goto" (page) is available on the View tab (but not goto
> line number).
>
>> We have to careful to remember our target audience though.
>
> +1 I think it took some strong restraint to keep the number of features
> exposed down to what we see today in Write :-)

+1

I'm not sure this is a feature that many kids will need. However, if
teacher/child feedback indicates it would be a nice addition, I'd
recommend displaying these statistics within a palette. There could be
a "statistics" button that, when hovered or clicked revealed a palette
containing whatever pieces of info are worth exposing. I'm not sure
what tab/toolbar that button would fit best within, though...

Eben


> If you have the time – I've been looking for feedback on a new Toolbar
> design that may be arriving in some form for Sugar 0.86. Some of the goals
> are to show the "Stop" activity button at all times (kids often get lost in
> the text tabs); resolve the difficulty of small click targets caused by the
> narrow height text tabs; use icons rather than relying on text tab names
> (lower age, and improved non-illiterate access):
>
>  http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Proposals/Toolbars#Top_level_Activity_toolbar_for_Write
>
> The mock-ups specifically keep the current Write functionality and tool
> groupings so it can be more easily compared with the current Write
> implementation.
>
> Regards,
> --Gary
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>