NanoCount is a utility that keeps a live word count of the words in a Mac OS X TextEdit document. It also lets you set a word count goal, and shows a status bar indicating how close you are to the goal.
NanoCount was written by Paul Gorman (http://www.paulgorman.org) for National Novel Writing Month 2004 (http://www.nanowrimo.org). The goal of National Novel Writing month is to write a 50,000 word novel between November 1st and November 30th--that's 1667 words per day, every day in November. This version is revised for 2005.
Install NanoCount by dragging the NanoCount icon to your Applications folder. If you later wish to uninstall NanoCount, just drag the icon to the Trash. NanoCount requires Mac OS X 10.2 or greater. (I suspect it also require the BSD Subsystem, but most people should have that installed by default.)
Launch NanoCount by double-clinging its icon. NanoCount counts the words in the front window of TextEdit. If TextEdit is not yet running, NanoCount will display 0 for the word count. When you switch documents, the count will change to reflect the number of words in the new front window. If you quit TextEdit before quitting NanoCount, the word count will reflect that of the last open TextEdit document. The Goal is not document specific--it doesn't change when you change TextEdit windows.
Note that, in previous version of NanoCount, when you finished editing your document you needed to quit NanoCount before you quit TextEdit. If you quit TextEdit before you quit NanoCount, NanoCount would relaunch TextEdit. This is no longer the case; NanoCount will not cause TextEdit to run.
The number in the box at the top of the NanoCount window is the total word count for the front TextEdit document.
The progress bar under that number reflects the percentage of words completed towards the Goal.
The little round button to the right of the status bar activates a drawer that lets you set a number of options.
To set the word Goal, open the options drawer by clicking the round button, then type a number in the box under the progress bar (the one with the default 1667) and click the Set Goal button.
The "Update" radio buttons let you set how often NanoCount actually counts the words in the front TextEdit document. You don't really need to change this, but if you're on laptop battery power you could extend the battery life a little by selecting a longer Update time.
The "Show" radio buttons let you choose to either count words (the default) or the number of characters. Counting characters works the same way as counting words, and you can switch back and forth between the two.
If you find a bug or have any questions or suggestions, feel free to email me at paul@paulgorman.org. I don't know of any serious bugs in NanoCount, but it hasn't been thoroughly tested. It does seem to scale-up pretty well--to hundreds of thousands of words.
NanoCount is not commercial, shareware, or nagware--it's egoware. If you find NanoCount useful, please send me an email at paul@paulgorman.org. If you have a blog, it would be cool if you wrote an entry about NanoCount or linked to my blog.
NanoCount is copyright Paul Gorman 2004-2005. You are free to use NanoCount for any non-commercial purpose. Do not modify or redistribute NanoCount without permission. NanoCount is supplied without an warranty--don't blame me if you computer catches fire. TextEdit and Mac OS X are copyrights of Apple Computer. Apple probably isn't even aware that NanoCount exists.