[TxMt] Writing Bundle [was: Lookup current word in Dictionary.app]

[Mark Eli Kalderon]

>
> 5. Some commands for getting better statistics than the current  
> document statistics count.  It would be nice to have a word count  
> which knows how to ignore stuff in html/latex/markdown tags, etc.  
> etc. (or maybe bundles can provide overrides to this command, and  
> all call out to a single script), but it would also be nice to be  
> able to get some readability statistics, such as counts of average  
> word length, average sentence length, and maybe metrics like Flesch- 
> Kincaid, etc.

> 6. It might even be nice to add some tools for checking grammar  
> (flagging things like wordy sentences, etc.).  There are some  
> decent open-source programs for this, I believe.
>

Jacob, you might have a look at diction, a descendant of the Writer's  
Workbench:

http://directory.fsf.org/GNU/diction.html

The `style` command gives a number of metrics including Flesch- 
Kincaid and `diction` checks for grammar (although it perpetuates  
some of the unfortunate aspects of Strunk and White's prescriptions--- 
useful nonetheless).

As for filtering LaTeX commands, I run the generated pdf through  
ps2ascii before running these. Won't work for html documents, but you  
could run them through a text browser like lynx or links with the  
dump option instead.

All the best, Mark