Words per page ideas: a) parse text length before import; b) target number of pages

[jamesdeluk]

Currently you set the number of words per page.

Two ideas how to improve this:

a) Parse the number of words in the Text box or file before having to create the book. This overcomes the annoyance of making a two-page book with 250 words on page 1 and 1 word on page 2. To avoid slowing the application, perhaps have it as an optional button on the New Book page.

b) The ability to set a target number of pages instead of words. If I have a 1500 word document and I say I want 3 pages, it automatically calculates 1500/3 = 500 words per page.

[jzohrab]

Hi, thanks for the note.

An aside: Lute actually splits pages a bit differently: it splits pages by sentence, getting as close to the token count (word count) as possible. You'll never have a page with just one word, but you might have a page with just one sentence. So your question still stands.

There's an existing issue, https://github.com/LuteOrg/lute-v3/issues/356, which would address issue a) well, I think. Let me know if that works for you.

Target number of pages -- I think we should skip this idea because it's too easy to get wrong -- e.g. I import a 100 page book and I say I want it to be 10 pages long. That could get nasty, kill performance etc.

@jamesdeluk LMK if #356 covers your need, and if you're ok with closing this issue. Cheers!

[jamesdeluk]

Lute actually splits pages a bit differently: it splits pages by sentence, getting as close to the token count (word count) as possible. You'll never have a page with just one word, but you might have a page with just one sentence. So your question still stands.

That makes sense! I probably should have realised that already.

There's an existing issue, https://github.com/LuteOrg/lute-v3/issues/356, which would address issue a) well, I think. Let me know if that works for you.

I feel that's slightly different; my understanding is it stops short final pages, so if I have the max at 200 words, then the last page would be up to 280 words (200 + 40%)

My idea is:

1. Fill the Text box, or attach a document
2. [Optional] Click a 'word count' button, which tells the word count
3. Set words per page or total pages

For example, if the word count is 700, I could set 350 words per page (or 2 pages). If it was 800, I could choose 200 (or 4 pages).

There could still be an upper limit if using total pages, i.e. if it was 20,000 (i.e. a book), and the user said 1 page, you could alert the user, for example, "minimum number of pages for this text is 10" (i.e. 2000/page), to overcome the performance issues.

Personally, I'd prefer the 'word count' function more than 'total pages', because I can manually calculate the latter from the former pretty easily, and it avoids the concerns you have about one-page novels.

Here's a userscript I (i.e. an LLM) built that adds the functionality: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/505086-lute-word-count

However, it only works for the textarea, not a file.

[jamesdeluk]

Thinking back on this, is there an option to set the default words per page?

[jzohrab]

Hey @jamesdeluk - when you create a book, you can set the number of words per page.

[jamesdeluk]

Yeah, but it always starts at 250, correct? There's no setting to make the default value, say, 300? Recently I'm finding a bunch of texts which are 270 words, so it would be nice to have the default at 300 so I don't have to manually change it each time.

[jzohrab]

Sorry for lack of response: right, there's no setting for the default number of words. I'd like to avoid a "settings explosion" for each possible thing :-)

There's another issue, #475, which talks about splitting pages by paragraphs, instead of sentences. Sometimes paragraphs get split up in ways that don't make sense, lose clarity, etc. Perhaps that would help with the stray single-sentence pages.

Back to the original title, "parse text length before import" -- that would need to be an ajax call to the server as some langs can't be parsed just with javascript (e.g. Thai, Japanese, etc).

@jamesdeluk - I think I'd like to close this issue, given #475. I know it's not perfect for you, but it's a balancing act and I'm keen to manage the backlog if possible. Thoughts?

[jamesdeluk]

There could still end up being one page with a single paragraph, which I still don't think is ideal, but fair enough - I know there's a lot to do! And the issue will still be here under a wontfix for one day.

Although I don't think one more setting for "default words per page" would be tooooo search explosiony 😉

[jzohrab]

OK :-) I added a new issue for the page size setting, and then I'll close this one due to issue #475. Cheers and thanks!