Make project tree view and novel tree view count section word counts display the same way

[RafaelCS-Aula]

I'll preface by saying I wasn't sure if this is intended behaviour or a bug, but I opened this issue as an enhancement. Hopefully it's not too much of a bother if it's wrong.

I've noticed the Project Tree view and the Novel Tree views display the word counts differently: the project tree view displays the higher "sections", files in this case, with its word count being the sum of its lower sections, or encompassing files; while the novel tree view doesn't.

Here's some screenshots to help:

As a test, I have 2 chapters, each with 2 scenes with the same amount of words on them. Chapter 1 has its scenes on individual files and chapter 2 has everything in one file split by headers.

This is for the project tree view:

And here is the novel tree view: (I moved ever chapter after 2 to the trash bin but they're showing up in the novel tree view too. Is this also intended?)

The project tree view has imo the more intuitive and useful way of doing word counting, but I personally prefer to use large files and seperate scenes and sections by headers as I write so I usually have the novel tree view open to see how big each part of the whole thing is. So, in the novel tree view, the highest header's word count should include the sum of all the headers bellow it, like in the project tree view.

[vkbo]

The project view is a tree view into the project's file structure, and it accumulates word counts in folders or sub-documents all the way up to the top to give a project word count (displayed in the status bar). This is only possible because the parent-child relationship between documents and folders is clear.

The novel view is not a tree view at all. It's a list of headings with the word count of the text from each heading. The indentation does not indicate parent-child relationship, as is clear if you just add a single scene to a project. It will still be indented the same as other scenes. Thus the parent-child relationship is not clear nor defined.

Keep in mind that novelWriter doesn't care about the parent-child relationship of the content when looking at the project text itself. It views it as a completely flat list, as if all the text was in the same document. The novel view reflects this. That's why the word count is different.

In the project tree you can put chapter documents on the same level as scenes and thus avoid the accumulated word count. Scenes don't have to be child objects of chapters. You can just put them next to each other.

If you want a word count and page count summary of a novel folder, the Novel Details panel is the one that provides this. It treats the text as a structured novel and gives you the counts for each chapter.

[vkbo]

I moved ever chapter after 2 to the trash bin but they're showing up in the novel tree view too. Is this also intended?

It just means it hasn't updated yet. You can click the refresh button in the novel view toolbar to update it manually.

[RafaelCS-Aula]

I see. Thanks for clearing it up.