character counter

a cool python script and desktop utility to count characters, words, sentences, lines, paragraphs, and estimated pages. features a rich, multi-tab tkinter gui with advanced text metrics and full cli support.

features

1. advanced text metrics

• readability indices: flesch reading ease & flesch-kincaid grade level with educational grade interpretations.
• speech & timing estimates: reading time (at 200 wpm) and speaking time (at 130 wpm) formatted nicely.
• keyword density analysis: lists top 5 content-bearing keywords (excluding common english stopwords).
• character frequency distribution: tracks the most frequently used alphanumeric characters.

2. redesigned gui (tkinter)

• multi-tab notebook layout:
  • overview: standard grid of layout cards showing basic counts and page estimations.
  • readability & timing: detailed cards for reading ease levels and verbal/silent time tracking.
  • keywords: lists the top keywords side-by-side with a dynamic, custom canvas-drawn density bar chart.
  • character frequency: displays top characters side-by-side with a dynamic frequency bar chart.
• dark mode toggle: instantly switch between high-contrast light and low-strain dark themes.
• text formatting toolbar: selection-aware uppercase, lowercase, title case, sentence case, and whitespace cleaning converters.

3. command-line interface

• json formatting: output all metrics as structured json using --json or -j.
• specific metric filtering: filter output to print only words, characters, readability, or sentences.
• regex querying: search for and count custom strings or regular expressions via --query / -q.

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installation

you can easily install the app via pip:

pip install character-counter-maaren

(you may need to use pipx or a virtual environment depending on your system)

alternatively, you can download the source files directly from github releases.

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usage

once installed, the charcount command will be available globally in your terminal.

gui mode

run the command with no arguments to open the gui:

charcount

cli mode

the tool will automatically run in the terminal if you pass a file or use the --cli or -c flags:

charcount --cli

examples:

• analyze a file:

  charcount path/to/file.txt

• pipe text directly:

  echo "some text to analyze" | charcount

• get json output:

  charcount --json path/to/file.txt

• extract only specific metrics (e.g. words & lines):

  charcount --words --lines path/to/file.txt

• count regex pattern occurrences:

  charcount --query "[a-z]+ing" --regex path/to/file.txt

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requirements

• python 3
• tkinter (built-in)
• collections, json, math, re, argparse (built-in standard library)