Atlantis suggestions - Total writing/editing time & auto

Request new features or suggest modifications to existing features of Atlantis.
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andygrunt
Posts: 230
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:35 pm

Atlantis suggestions - Total writing/editing time & auto

Post by andygrunt »

A feature I've often wanted in a Word processor is a record of how long I've spent writing a document. I don't just mean the time between when the document was created and now or the total time the document was open. No, I mean the time actually spent writing.

For example, I may open a document in the morning and spend 30 minutes writing (i.e. typing and editing the doc). Then I may go away and do something else or open another doc and work on that or even go out for lunch (my original document staying open all this time). Later the same day I may spend another hour actually writing before closing the document. Even though it's been open all day, I'd have only spent around 1.5 hours actually writing/editing my document. A similar pattern of use may go on over several days, weeks or months and my total writing time would be continuously updated. Is it possible to add this feature?

An additional thought on this is if you have what I describe above, it could be easily extended to estimate how long it would take (given the writing rate it took to create the current total in this doc) to write 'X' number of words. So, a simple example would be that if it took 1 hour to write 500 words the author could ask how long to write 1000 words and the answer would be another hour (2Hrs in total).


Also, while I'm here... After using Atlantis for some time now and being generally very happy with it, the feature I find I miss more than expected (from my days using 'Word') is the ability to automatically number illustrations. For example, I add a picture and it's automatically captioned "Figure 1" (plus whatever text I add to the caption). I add a second picture and it's captioned "Figure 2". I then add a third picture between the originals and it's captioned "Figure 2" and the original second picture's caption automatically changes to "Figure 3".
Robert
Posts: 1900
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:27 pm

Post by Robert »

Hi,
You might want to have a look at a freeware utility called "MapleXp". Here is from the home site (http://maplexp.veex.net/index.php?lang=en):

"MapleXp application gives you the ability to track multiple projects and categorize how much time went into each of the tasks involved. Each project can be divided into a hierarchical structure of tasks, which allows for very precise tracking of working time."

Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Robert
andygrunt
Posts: 230
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:35 pm

Post by andygrunt »

Robert wrote: You might want to have a look at a freeware utility called "MapleXp".
Thanks for the suggestion but it doesn't look suitable to me for a number of reasons:

1 - I don't want to have to rely on a separate application that I would have to remember to start & stop every time and even if it could be setup to auto run and be left running all the time, I'd not want to add it to my already full and slowing laptop

2 - I don't want to also have to install .NET to my already full and slowing laptop

3 - The website doesn't give much in the way of detail on this application but I'm not convinced it would report the data concerning the editing of a particular document as I wish. I would guess it would only report on how long Atlantis was being used generally and not a particular document within it. Even if it did work on a particular document, I'm not sure it would add up the time it was actually edited - I suspect it just totals the time the doc was open (which is not the same thing).

All in all I'd much prefer the feature added into Atlantis.
Robert
Posts: 1900
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:27 pm

Post by Robert »

Here is what you could do from within Atlantis.

Create and save two clip items named Start Time and End Time (or any other convenient names).
In each clip item, insert fields such as

Document Title
Document Filename
Creation Date
Last Save Date
Current Date
Current Time
Page Count
Word Count
Current Page Number

Format each clip item with odd characteristics that won't be used for the document text proper (e.g. rose double wavy underline). This will allow you to remove these inserted clip items at one go when you don't need them any more (using the Ctrl+H dialogue and the Font Format properties).

When these two clip items are available in your Clip Library, you can insert "Start Time" when you start working on a document, and "End Time", when you are finished typing.

This way, you could build a log recording all the time spent on each of your working documents. Of course, you'll still have to compute the various sums manually.
andygrunt
Posts: 230
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:35 pm

Post by andygrunt »

Again, thanks for the suggestion and I like your lateral thinking but, in all honesty, the technique doesn't really appeal to me.

It's not too much more advanced than using pen, paper and a clock to achieve what I want but being lazy and having a computer sitting in front of me, I'd like it all to be automatic and available to me without any effort on my part. This is especially true for the times when I will start a document not knowing that (at some point in the future) I'd like to know the editing time. If it's built in to Atlantis, the information would still be available to me.
Inky_960
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jun 09, 2008 5:00 pm

This WOULD Be Nice!

Post by Inky_960 »

Andy, I agree. I'd *love* to know how much time I spend working on document a, document b, etc. And with no multi-step work-around hassel for doing it. Make it a simple function of the program. When a document is open and the keys are clicking (or just when the document is open), the timer is running, counting upward.

I write articles and stories and all sorts of documents, and I have no idea how much time I actually spend on any one of them (I can guess -- that's about it.) To *know* -- this would be most useful and enlightening.

So c'mon, guys -- how about it?


Regards,

Loren
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admin
Site Admin
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Post by admin »

It is quite possible that the next minor release of Atlantis Word Processor will have new optional status bar sections - Writing time and Writing speed.
Inky960
Posts: 12
Joined: Thu May 08, 2008 3:28 pm

New status bar for time spent writing?

Post by Inky960 »

COOL! This puts Atlantis _miles_ in the lead as my favorite word processor. Every writer I speak with gets my Atlantis sermon, and I'm sure I've converted a few. I'll keep talking. You guys keep making it great.

Loren
andygrunt
Posts: 230
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:35 pm

Post by andygrunt »

admin wrote:It is quite possible that the next minor release of Atlantis Word Processor will have new optional status bar sections - Writing time and Writing speed.
That's great news - thanks! :D
andygrunt
Posts: 230
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:35 pm

Post by andygrunt »

For anyone following this thread that doesn't check back to the forum regularly...

There's now a Beta version available that includes this feature - give it a try :D
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