total number of topics?

[tana]

Hi, I am trying to get a count of the total number of topics in the project... have read through Flare's Help and searched this forum and still can't figure it out. There is a way, because a post to the forum mentioned it.. but didn't say how. ;-(

Thanks very much, especially for any speedy replies!
tana

[lacastle]

I'd probably open the project in Windows Explorer and select all the topics. There's a count at the bottom of the Windows Explorer window.

Analyzer probably will tell you the number of topics you have.

[tana]

Duh, thanks, I feel pretty foolish. I figured that out shortly after hittng Submit on the post, of course. I was spoiled by some tool (Dreamweaver??) that showed all sorts of statistics on your project, such as file count, images count, visual map of internal vs. external links, broken links (Flare does this too, i know, but, err..).

anyway, thanks for the reply.
tana

[lacastle]

don't worry about it. i *wish* flare gave out statistics, but i think we'll have to wait for flare 4 for any hint of that. (?)

[forfear]

nice to have Word Count...this lil feature is why Word beats all other word processors:)

Wish list...

Word Count for a topic
Word Count for a selected paragrah

[lacastle]

Yes. It's a good thing Flare isn't marketed as word processor.

[RamonS]

Just out of interest, what do you do with the data once word count is established? And what constitutes a word?

[Richard Ferrell]

In Analyzer you can run a statistics report that will give you results like the following:

Project: C:\customer work files\********\**lm\**lm.flprj
Generated: 7/25/2008 11:42:11 AM
By: rferrell
Statistics
Date: 7/25/2008
Topic Count: 107
Word Count: 23832
Segment Count: 2291
Image Count: 198
Snippet Count: 59
Broken Links: 2
Undefined Variables: 0
Undefined Condition Tags: 0
Undefined Glossary Term Links: 0
Undefined Styles: 7

[LTinker68]

What does "segment count" refer to?

[Richard Ferrell]

Analyzer give you the ability to set Segments, So it would be Common words or sentances put together, its useful for Finding Snippets suggestions,

[forfear]

Just out of interest, what do you do with the data once word count is established? And what constitutes a word?

For example, when you are writing for a print publication, or newsletter or journal article or contest entry form, where there is a specific word limit, the Word count helps to give a quick indicator how far along the process we are in.

IMHO, of course FLare is not meant for creating short print documents less than a page, but it is a fairly useful metric to have i guess. Select a paragraph, and Flare counts the number of words in the selection.

[RamonS]

Yes, I know that there are plausible uses for word count in print publishing (as a writer for newspapers one typically gets paid by the word printed, I used to get 30 DPf when I worked for a paper). I meant my question more in regards to Flare. The word count resulted into topic A having 2038 words. What does one do with that information other than think "OK, what's next?".

[LTinker68]

I meant my question more in regards to Flare. The word count resulted into topic A having 2038 words. What does one do with that information other than think "OK, what's next?".

Brag/Report to the boss about how much you've written since the last version?

[forfear]

haha

[Rehmen]

I meant my question more in regards to Flare. The word count resulted into topic A having 2038 words. What does one do with that information other than think "OK, what's next?".

Brag/Report to the boss about how much you've written since the last version?

I hope my boss will never ask the question: "How much you've written since the last version?" because if he does i would think that he is complete idiot who doesn't know anything about my job. Because (at least in my case) writing is the shortest part of project developing.

I think that it can be usefull for having just a quick idea about how is the project big and maybe check the ration words/files which could tell you if your topics are not too long or too short. If you will ever find any usage of this info then please let me know

[RamonS]

Well, after how many words is a topic too long? Is there also something like a too short topic?

[LTinker68]

Shortest sentence in the English language is "I am". So I've decided any topic with anything less than that doesn't need to be a topic.

[Rehmen]

Well, after how many words is a topic too long? Is there also something like a too short topic?

For example we had topic describing menu "File" in which every command was shortly desrcibed and for each command there was separate topic. But because of this we had topic "Exit" in which there was only 1 sentence (same as descriprion in topic "File"). So we deleted those short topics .

On the other hand we decided to not make too "long" topics in our html help because when user see that they have to read a long text they can be frustrated (not from my head)

[doc_guy]

I actually had to estimate this once in order to fill out a form for a government contract. Our government sales rep came to me and wanted to know the size of the help system in both file size and total words. I looked at him with my "are you freaking kidding me?" look, but estimated away -- since nobody had a better guess than I did, I knew nobody would count up all the words anyway. What a stupid thing to ask for.

Anyway, not only does a boss who asks for word count not get my job because writing is only a small part of what I do, they don't get my job, because the simpler I can make my help project, the better it is for my customer. So, fewer words is often better than more words.

Thankfully, I have a boss that measures my job by meeting deadlines and end user satisfaction, rather than by stupid metrics like word count or topic count.

That said, there are many bosses out there of the pointy-head variety, who actually do as for this info. So it is nice that Analyzer can at least give it to you if you have somebody dumb enough to ask for it.