GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 625485
Show the total number of characters while editing subtitles
Last modified: 2011-07-16 21:32:25 UTC
I'm sending you some proposals for future releases of Gnome Subtitles. There could be a number near the edit boxes, indicating how many characters are used per line. This is very helpful for translating, since some video players support only up to 40 characters/line. Additionally, there could be an error-checking feature, for detecting unnecessary spaces, empty subtitles, lines without letters, overlapping, unnecessary dots, subtitles over two lines, unnecessary spaces, too long/short durations and too long lines. And finally there could be a 'merge' feature for merging 2 consecutive lines. Best Regards Steve
Hi, and thanks for the suggestions. Some comments: (In reply to comment #0) > I'm sending you some proposals for future releases of Gnome Subtitles. > There could be a number near the edit boxes, indicating how many characters are > used per line. This is very helpful for translating, since some video players > support only up to 40 characters/line. For example in the status bar, where it shows "Text Ln X Col Y"? > Additionally, there could be an error-checking feature, for detecting > unnecessary spaces, empty subtitles, lines without letters, overlapping, > unnecessary dots, subtitles over two lines, unnecessary spaces, too long/short > durations and too long lines. This has already been reported before, in bug #439832 - Dialog with information and errors. > And finally there could be a 'merge' feature for merging 2 consecutive lines. Do you mean if the total character count in those 2 lines is less than 40, turn them into 1 line?
> For example in the status bar, where it shows "Text Ln X Col Y"? I mean something that counts the number of character in a line eg. http://i414.photobucket.com/albums/pp224/sorvats_/charactercount.jpg > Do you mean if the total character count in those 2 lines is less than 40, turn them into 1 line? Yes. Sometimes subtitles change too fast, and you want to JOIN two lines, and make them more readable for the viewer. You turn them into 1 line, and change the duration of the line to begin from where the first starts, to where the second line ends.
Alright. I've added the second part (merging subtitles) to bug #439832 - Dialog with information and errors. This is a feature suggestion that consists on a dialog to detect and fix common errors in subtitles. This bug report will correspond to the first part - showing the total number of characters while editing subtitles.
This bug has been parcially implemented. The development version now allows to show the number of characters in the subtitle list, for each line. This is an option (on by default) saved between sessions. This implementation is available in the PPA (https://launchpad.net/~pedrocastro/+archive/ppa). Missing is still the possibility to show the counters in the editing area. Subtitle Workshop implementation doesn't feel very natural, I'd rather have this in the text lines inside the editing box.
The second part (showing character counts in the subtitle editing area) has been implemented by showing them on a margin that appears on the right side of the area. TODO: apply the same mechanism to the subtitle list (which currently shows counts between parenthesis).