Below the page
On the left, the document’s length: a click switches from words to characters, spaces included, and then to standard pages as the language of the book counts them (250 words in English). On the right, the reading time. Finis counts the text as a reader sees it: no Markdown symbols, comments or footnotes.
Statistics
Statistics, at the bottom of the sidebar, or the book’s words under its title open the statistics of the Document, its Folder and the Book, and of the Selection when text is selected: words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, reading time and the words written over the last seven or thirty days, or with All since the first day. Copy the Statistics copies them, ready to paste; Copy the History copies the words of every day, to paste into Numbers or Excel as two columns.
For the document and the selection, Most used words shows the words you repeat most, leaving out articles, prepositions and the other little words of the book’s language. They are counted on your Mac, without sending anything; click a word to find it on the page.
Goals
- Select a document or a folder and open the inspector (⌥⌘I).
- Under Goal, set how many words or characters: at least, about or at most.
- A ring fills next to the name in the sidebar: green when you get there, red if you go past an “at most”.
The book folder can also have a date. Finis divides what is left by the days remaining and, each day, tells you at the top of the sidebar how many words to write today.
Without a date, Every Day sets a pace of your own, say 500 words: at the top of the sidebar and in Today it is the day’s goal. If you then set a date, the date counts; remove it and your pace comes back.
Under Writing Days, choose the days of the week you write: the date and Every Day count only those, and on the others the day’s goal asks nothing.
Call It a Day
At the end of every document sits the F. of Finis, like the “Finis” printed at the end of old books. Click it to open Today: the words written today in the book, on the ring of the day’s goal when the book has a date or a daily pace, and the documents you wrote in. Call It a Day closes the day: it saves a version of each of those documents named after the day, such as “End of Tuesday, October 6”, which you’ll find tomorrow in Versions, ready to compare. You can also close a day without edits: the point lights up without creating new versions. After that, Reopen the Day opens the day again, keeping all saved versions and word counts. You can call it a day again whenever you like: only changed documents get a new version. The point of the F turns terracotta once you’ve written the day’s words, or called it a day. If you’d rather have the page without it, turn it off in Settings › Interface.