How can I count the number of characters in the compiled version of a Latex file? This should include spaces and all of the document (index, footnotes, bibliography etc)
Word Count – How to Count All Characters Including Spaces
word count
Related Solutions
If you (re)define \footnote as follows
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Alice has a cat\footnote{Bob has a blob}
\def\footnote#1{}
Alice has a cat\footnote{Bob has a blob}
\end{document}
the words in footnotes will not appear. Then you can choose a suitable tool, e.g. http://felix-cat.com/tools/wordcount/ to count words in the obtained PDF file. Of course, if your journals suggest another tools, they will be preferable.
Without counting spaces, probably TeXcount is the best solution. Otherwise, assuming that additional normal spaces characters in the source code can be safely ignored (but not space commands as \quad, including even \\ and \par ...) one solution that could work reasonably for simple documents (not for child documents and text in math mode, sorry) is convert from .tex to .lyx using:
LyX menu : File > ImportFile > LaTeX (plain) ...
tex2lyxdirectly (e.g, at the system prompt typetex2lyx -c report test.tex test.lyx, and nextlyx test.lyx).
Then, simply ask for the statistics in LyX Tools > Statitistics...
Example:
Source code test.tex:
\documentclass{report}
\begin{document}
This is an example.
This is a file that can contain everything, eq. figures, equations, minpages etc. To make it simple , let 's say that it contains the following text and equation
\begin{equation}
2+2=4 \text{A text}
\end{equation}
\end{document}
Result:
Best Answer
This is probably as much as you can get
For DVI files one can use
(Thanks to Bob for having pointed to the
-encoption and tocatdvi.)