Return to the Article Index
Return to the Main CD Index

Graphic Interpretation - Let me count the ways
by Bruce Thomas

This article, or at least the concept, began to take shape quite a few years ago. I really liked what I could do with my Commodore, geoPublish and a Laser Printer but, as editor and chief writer of our club newsletter, I just filled the space - I never worried about how much I wrote. When I first started to submit articles for publication by other people I needed to start being concerned about words.

Not that I haven't always been particular about the words I put onto paper. It was just that now I needed to know how many words I was putting onto paper.

With geoWrite, unlike other popular word processors, there is no option to get a word count while you are using the program. Berkeley Softworks (BSW) added that feature into their geoSpell product. Since my spelling is quite good, I hardly ever use geoSpell, preferring rigorous proofreading to catch errors and improve the flow of the article. Only when I want to check for typing errors do I run my geoWrite files through geoSpell.

One, two, three,

Since 1000 words seemed to be a favored target of editors I decided I would fire up geoSpell and see what I had managed to crank out prior to submitting my first article. After agreeing that all of my flagged words were actually spelled correctly I was given my word count.

Okay, great, I went over by a small margin. It just seemed like such an awful process for a good speller to have to go through to get a word count.

I remembered a type-in program from an old Compute!s Gazette and dug out my disk collection. I soon found Word Count by Shawn Smith (January 1988). This handy little program purported to handle geoWrite versions 1.0, 2.0 and 2.1 files and it wouldn't make me wait as long for my answer as geoSpell had.

I double-clicked the file and a few seconds passed. Up popped a dialog box with a lower number of words. Huh?!? What happened to the rest of my words? I was confused to say the least.

The brain cells churned a bit and I remembered another word counting program. This one I found on a disk from geoVision International (remember this short-lived publication?). The late Michael Myers had written a neat little Desk Accessory (DA) that seemed to work quite quickly. Again, however, I was presented with a different tally of my prose.

How could I tell which program was correct? Actually counting the words myself seemed a little harsh but I did it anyhow. Oh Boy! Different again! I gave up on the process for the time being but knew, as the next deadline grew nearer, that I would come back to it.

More Choices, More Information

In the interim I discovered some more handy utilities that would provide me with answers. These included Write Hand Man (Joe Buckley) from RUN Magazine's Power Pak Disk, Blue Pencil (Charles E. Kinney), Copy Editor (Raymond Kerby) and Joe Votour's Word Counter DA that I finally found on-line.

A number of these programs go above and beyond simple Word Counting. Copy Editor, for example, counts long words, total sentences and average words per sentence (but Copy Editor does not handle geoWrite V2.1 files very well). Write Hand Man (WHM) provides a count of sentences, average number of words per sentence and a total breakdown of words by length (1 letter words, 2 letter words, etc.).

Blue Pencil gives the user the option to get just a count of words, sentences, paragraphs, pages and Graphics (!) or to add a tally of averages. The averages include word length, words/sentence, paragraph and page along with sentences/paragraph and page and paragraphs/page. One big drawback is a common 'Sorry, problem with file access' dialog box on files that WHM handles with ease.

Word Count, from the Gazette, does not handle multi-page documents very well. The counts go all wacky once the program encounters Page Breaks. In defence of the Author, geoWrite V2.1 was not out when this was written but that doesn't matter today if the program doesn't work reliably.

One final HUGE knock is that none of the programs I mention in this article work in 128 80-column mode and running Jim Collette's 'Set 40/80 Flag' program resulted in very odd behavior.

The count is in

If it all came down to reliability and the most features the choice would be simple for best overall program - WHM wins hands down. What I was looking for, however, was an option that would give me a quick count of my words as I was developing the articles. This made the choice even simpler. The winner would have to be a Desk Accessory.

I had found 2 Word Counting DA's - now which one was the best? Neither of these DA's use the DA background color flush so that Wheels feature is handy.

Word Counter is a great program but it acts a little odd in Wheels. It doesn't use the Wheels Dialog Box but uses its own custom one. It also does not respond to the Wheels Mouse Driver right-button double-click.

After much testing I have to choose Word Count by Michael Myers. This one actually counts numbers (3, 4, 5,) and includes them in the word count total.

I will finish off with a challenge for all of the programmers in the audience. Create an accurate Word Count DA that flushes the background color, works in 40 and 80 column mode on all versions of geoWrite files and works in the Wheels environment as well as GEOS 2.0.

Until next time, enGEOy your Commodore!