[patch] Selection stats in statusbar

[Daniel]

On 2022-08-09 23:53, Pavel Sanda wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 06, 2022 at 12:23:25PM -0400, Scott Kostyshak wrote:
>>> I suggest we put this into master and let ppl test on their machines
>>> if any noticeable changes are visible when editing documents. At worst
>>> we can disable this feature by default.
>>
>> Sounds good to me. Thanks for the patch updates. I suggest to commit now.
> 
> It's now in 5b50a97fd76d2.
> 
> Please give it some testing once you back...
> 
> Thanks,
> Pavel

I just tested the new feature. Here are a couple of things that came to 
my mind:

1. The delay timer seems not to be working as expected. Normally, i.e. 
in other word processors, the idea is this:

While typing, no updating takes place, only once the typing stops, the 
update timer starts. Once typing is continued, the update timer is 
stopped. I guess this is to make sure that calculation of the statistics 
is very unlikely to interfere with the typing.

However, as it is now, the word count gets updated sometimes while 
continuously typing. I thought that I had figured this out in my patch 
but maybe not. (Or that is a part where you where wondering why it was 
as it was.)

2. The display is quite cryptic since it is not immediately clear what 
"w", "c" and "cb" is. Minimally, I suggest to add a tooltip explaining 
this. Ideally, I would write at least "3 words, 23 characters" out, as 
it is the case in other word processors (Writer and Word).

I see that this might get a bit longish if "characters including blanks" 
is written out. Here are a couple of alternatives:

a. abbreviate only these: "42 cb".
b. show blanks: "19 blanks".

3. One should be able to choose ones statics that are shown. I have 
never come across a scenario where I had to keep track of both words and 
characters. And most of the time it is the same, only words for me. So, 
it would be nice, if there was a specific context menu for the 
statistics that lets one choose which one to show in order to avoid 
clutter with extra information. This doesn't rule out showing multiple 
statistics at least in principle and abbreviations could be used 
depending on the number of statistics shown.

4. At least on macOS, there is currently a border around the statistics 
in the status bar. This does not integrate well with the other 
information shown which does not have a border. The border-less style 
seems more clean to me.

I know that you are busy, so just let me know if I should look into any 
of these.

Thanks,
Daniel