IDEA: Word Count Percentage Find and Spot Browser

[Paul Keith]

I don't know the specific word but to create a better picture, I would like to compare a separate program. PopUp Wisdom and several Quotes app in Android PlayStore.

Both have the same functionality but the Quotes App allows for favoriting apps making it easier to curate custom quotes collection while PopUp Wisdom makes it easier to add custom quotes and remove them in bunches.

Anyway back to the program idea:

Many word count tools calculate the total word count but they are not able to count a certain percentage of the word count and jump to that word paragraph containing the word count.

This makes it hard to gauge where the mid-way point of say a fictional story is.

I mentioned the above bit because finding the portion of the text is only half the story. A writer might also want to bookmark and highlight the portion of the story, add or reduce a few more words and compare the initial half-way point with that of the revised area.

The only way to save a section quickly is through a favorites button. It does not matter if the program stores the favorites so long as it is able to create a new file at the cut off point and letting text comparison software do the rest of the spotting and recombinations of text.

The other bit is that it must be able to quickly insert or delete a text. Again, it's not important if the program can modify the text so long as it can, like a bookmark, set the text editor to open at a particular point where the mouse cursor is located inside the point where the word count is supposed to calculate the text.

This latter also makes it easier to manually type a "tag line" to make the revisions much easier to spot albeit at the risk of messing with the actual word count.

UI:

I think the simplest UI without creating a full blown notepad or forcing a specific notepad software plugin is to combine Skwire's Text 2 Folder and Dimension 2 Folder.

Dimension 2 Folder will have a move to text file instead of move to destination. The program will then create the paragraph of the certain percentage into the destination and rename it as 20 percent plus the first word of the paragraph.

Text 2 Folder will have a root folder box and then will display a list of the titles with a note screen that can copy a couple words inside the text file or just a box to comment on why a particular text is being favorited. List headers can then be grouped based on the comments kind of like a tag.

Here's a quick link to Skwire's app page: http://skwire.dcmemb...b/pages/software.php

There are also other interesting interfaces there but I think the above is the quickest without complicating the program.

The program just has to do three things apart from calculating the word count/percentage:

1) Copy the paragraph and create a new file inside a custom folder (renamed to percent name plus first word being the thing that makes it easier to manually type the paragraph in a find box of any text editor)

2) Gather the files inside the custom folder and give it a mechanic to split into different folders (this will be the mechanic to set favorites)

3) Optionally open the root file and jump to the cursor where the percentage point is in case all a writer needs is the jump off point rather than a saved selection of the cut off point.

P.S. I'm still speaking of this as a non-coder so I apologize if my idea is more complicated than it sounds.

[TaoPhoenix]

This makes it hard to gauge where the mid-way point of say a fictional story is.

-Paul Keith (January 11, 2013, 10:34 PM)

Hi Paul,
This is just a small comment to your much broader post. But I usually use the scroll bar to jump to X% of a piece of text. Generally I find it can get within about which 20% I want to go to, and I have not needed to go any more accurately than that. Meanwhile if you know a certain word only appears in a certain place then I just go to Control-F to the word. I know that's not what you need but your feature of jumping to X% of a text interested me because I never needed it.

[Paul Keith]

I find most pros (even veteran beginner writers) don't need it.

It's more for what newbie novel writing blogs call novel momentum but for my own communication problems, I feel this novel momentum needs to be detected and not just woven by an author.

Example of an article that uses the term but does not specifically mention the lack of a software in detecting such momentum: http://thebookshelfm...oks-momentum-by.html

Now if the question is more the value of these apps, I admit currently there's not only no big demand for such a software but many word editing softwares does fine with not only ctrl+f but revisions, annotations, section jumps, etc. There's really a world beyond worlds out there if the point was search.

The potential exists though in the hand of the right marketer but unfortunately not being a pro I can't spell it out to you as to why you might want such a software (though not necessarily need it).

It's one of those cases where marketing the message I feel makes the message clearer than spelling it out.

Nevertheless I'll let these three links plus a quote from a sample of Kate Harper's Kindle Book speak for itself:

http://www.poynter.o...-the-sample-chapter/

but Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) tool does not let you specify a sample chapter for these books. If you’re a journalist who’s self-publishing (or working with a publisher that does not have a Kindle deal with Amazon), I recommend offering a sample chapter on your book’s Web site. It’s not quite as prominent as a Kindle sample chapter would be, but it helps. And you’ll be ready to publish your sample chapter in the Kindle store if and when Amazon makes that possible.

http://fessingauthor...-on-kindle-conf.html

The book sampling facility is a powerful incentive to get a Kindle. Instead of relying on reviews, if they happen, you can download the first few chapters of most new books and see for yourself if it's the kind of writing you're going to enjoy.

http://www.theatlant...res-of-plots/254835/

Will Kindle's Free Samples Change the Structures of Plots?

Only put 4 Things in Your First Page

Publishing guidelines for most e-Readers instruct you to put your front matter on separate pages (i.e. a table of contents, title, copyright, acknowledgements, dedication, preface, prologue, and publisher contact information). By doing this, you can easily add many pages to the beginning of your document before the reader arrives at your main content.

This practice is actually a disadvantage when publishing e-Reader articles. Because the Amazon Bookstore offers free samples of books and articles that are auto-generated from about the first 10% of the beginning of your document, this uses up precious sample space. For a book-length document, this might include the front matter plus one chapter, which is fine as a sample. However, for a kindle article 10% may not even allow your reader to reach the first paragraph of your content.

If your article sample ends up consisting of only your front matter, a potential buyer can't read the beginning of the content, reducing the odds they will buy it. Therefore, put most of the front matter at the end of your article instead of the beginning.

-Sample text from How to Publish and Sell Your Article on the Kindle 12 Tips for Short Documents by Kate Harper

As a disclaimer: I do want to point out that, despite my downloading a sample of such book, I have no plans to submit anything for the Kindle and my needs are different and as with any marketing, I don't think this is one of those application ideas that someone can just code and hit a home run in downloads. I am simply highlighting the potential market if the argument is that no one else will want to use it or that no one else will get why they need it.