Paragraph Measure

[Gahlord]

In addition to a Shetland pony, I would love have an information readout attached to the text box in Publisher that would show me the paragraph measure (number of words per line) of that text box.

Spitballing here but something that would:

For lines that have words in them
1. Count the number of words.
2. Average the number of words vs the lines that have words in them.
3. Display that number somewhere I can see it while I jiggle the handle, like the toolbar thingie.

In a fairly lengthy meeting, you could have a heated discussion about whether the calculation should be performed before the auto-linebreaks and assign some sort of decimal weighting based on the overhang of the words that break the line or whether the calculation should be performed after the auto-linebreaks because that's what users see anyway. Either of these options would be fine with me, I would happily get the coffee and pastries from the kitchen to make sure no one dies of malnourishment during the meeting.

This feature would help me make nice readable blocks of text. Or dense impenetrable text when I'm feeling mean.

[MikeTO]

I think you're asking for the paragraph measure of a text frame but because frames can be any shape you like, I think the paragraph measure should be reported for each paragraph or ideally for each line.

I could see this fitting into the document statistics list (aka word count). Some people might want the paragraph measure in words while others would want it in characters. Perhaps Publisher could report the measure of the current line or paragraph, or the average for the selected text or for the selected frame. Does this sound like what you were thinking?

[Gahlord]

Average for selected text could be nice. But truly I was thinking averaged out for a given and selected Text Frame. In practice, I set up a text frame and then want to make it readable by getting the sense of the measure of the paragraphs within that text frame. Most often, I make adjustments either by changing the width of the frame or adjusting the size of the text. I never really care about the paragraph measure on a single line of text, only in blocks of text because I usually care about paragraph measure in relation to readability of a lengthy text.

If I could quickly see what the paragraph measure was, on average, for all the paragraphs in a given text frame, I'd know how wide to make the text frame and/or how I might adjust the size or other characteristics of the type.

I think having it display in characters or words is fine either way. I use words and I suspect most people who actually care about paragraph measure do as well. But characters is rad too and I could learn to adjust. Or it could be a setting somewhere.

I would see paragraph measure as an attribute of an individual text frame (a function of typeface attributes like size and the width of the text frame itself). There may be several text frames on a page, each with different measures (main text and sidebar text, for example). I usually think of word count or character count as attributes of an entire document. The average paragraph measure of an entire document wouldn't be very useful for me, I don't think I would ever use it to make design decisions. But I would use paragraph measure to make design decisions about individual text frames.
 

[walt.farrell]

8 hours ago, Gahlord said:

I usually think of word count or character count as attributes of an entire document

But in Publisher offers some alternatives: https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Text/documentStats.html

[Gahlord]

Right on, put it with the word count stuff as long as I can see what the paragraph measure is for the text block while I adjust it's size I really don't mind one way or the other.