Attention lazyweb! Okay, I typically use Vim for all my text editing needs, but one of my co-workers is using (or was using) Kate and couldn’t find a word count feature. I popped Kate open on my desktop (version 2.5.0, from Ubuntu/Kubuntu) and couldn’t find a word count either — granted, I didn’t look too hard, but I’m thinking word count should be pretty much a given in any text editor/word processor, right?
Does anyone know if Kate has this functionality buried somewhere deep inside its twisty menu maze? Bonus points if someone could point me to a plugin or something that enables vi-like keybindings in Kate — I happen to like some of its features, but I just can’t get into writing or editing in anything that isn’t modal. It’s sick, I know.
By the way — word count in Vim is pretty easy: Just select the text you want to count, and use g Ctrl-g while in command mode. This will tell you how many words, lines, and columns you have selected as well as the number of words, lines, and columns in the file itself. Alternately, you can use :wc! % if you prefer the wc utility.
I found a solution for Kate’s wordcount at: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-92218.html
Key binding like Vim? man oh man, good luck
Yeah, I had found the link you point to… unfortunately, I don’t think that’s really suitable in this case. I was hoping that Kate actually had wordcount, and it was just buried in some weird place. It’s disheartening to think that it doesn’t have something as simple as wordcount. :/ I’m not terribly shocked that it doesn’t have Vim keybindings.
In KDE 4.0 you will be able to do this easier, but for KDE 3.5 you can use the External Tools menu. See the last mail in http://www.nabble.com/Kate-external-tools-to3751576.html
On kate with kde 4.x you can add the script:
1. Go to Settings – Configure kate
2. In “plugins” enable “External tools”
3. Go to “External tools” tab
4. Click “New”
5. Post thouse stings:
Label: Selection stat
Script: msg=`echo -E “%selection” | wc -cmwl | sed ‘s/\s*\([0-9]*\)\s*\([0-9]*\)\s*\([0-9]*\)\s*\([0-9]*\)/Bytes: \4\nCharacters: \3\nWords: \2\nLines: \1/’` && kdialog –msgbox “$msg”
Executable: kdialog
Command line name: selection_stat
6. Restart kate.
After this you can found it at Tools – External tools – Selection stat
It counts bytes, chars, words and lines of selected text.