[OS X TeX] word count in pdf file

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jan 4, 2011, at 5:10 PM, Alan Munn wrote:

> On Jan 4, 2011, at 6:06 PM, Herbert Schulz wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Jan 4, 2011, at 3:49 PM, Alan Munn wrote:
>> 
>>> On Jan 4, 2011, at 4:10 PM, Harry H. Hilton wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I  have searched the manuals and help areas regarding a procedure or macro for obtaining a word count of the the prose in the output .pdf file. Does anyone have any info? Thanks.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Word counting questions almost always lead to statements about its impossibility and/or uselessness.  However, if you use TeXShop there is an engine for counting words (texcount) in the ~/Library/TeXShop/Inactive/texcount folder.  Drag either of the engines out of its folder into the Engines folder, and you can use that to count words. To use it, choose it as the engine and then "typeset" the document. It will open a web summary of the counts and how it did it.  It works off of the latex source, but is pretty good for most things.
>>> 
>>> Alternatively, just select all the text from the pdf and dump it into MSWord or OpenOffice.
>>> 
>>> Alan
>> 
>> Howdy,
>> 
>> Of course that does a word count on the source file. You can also get a Dropscript that uses texcount as Droptexcount.zip from <http://public.me.com/herbs2>.
> 
> Is there any advantage of using this over the engine?  They do the same thing, no? (i.e. you can't drop a pdf file onto the Droptexcount script, right, just latex source.)
> 
> Alan

Howdy,

Although I don't understand why :-) not everyone uses TeXShop as their editor of choice. This is just an alternative and yes, it works with the TeX source.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)