When opening the application, the main window appears. It may have two forms : standard and nano. The form can be changed by pressing the round "+" or "-" button on the right side of the main window or by using the Window menu.
The nano window is a "global floating window", that is to say it is always visible over any other active window.
To count a text, just select it in its own application, then drag-and-drop it on the CaraCaraC window.
There is an other method (recommended for very long texts) : copy the text into the clipboard and then use File / Count the clipboard menu.
Check boxes on the left side allow you to choose whether you want to count punctuation marks and unprintable characters (space, newline...) or not.
After counting, general results are displayed. The standard window also displays full Statistics.
The color of this window (black or grey) can be chosen via the Window menu.
The general results are displayed at the top of the window and the full Statistics below them.
• The Raw number of characters is the total number of characters, including punctuation marks and unprintable characters.
• The Net number of characters is, as above, the total number of characters, but including or not including punctuation marks and unprintable characters, according to left hand checkboxes.
Full Statistics are presented in tabular form. There are six columns :
• C. : Name of the character.
• Rank. : Ranking. The most frequent character is ranked 1st. If several characters have the same frequency, they have the same rank.
• ASCII. : ASCII code of the character. (The ASCII code is a number between 0 and 65536. Each character has its own ASCII code.)
• Occurrences. : Number of occurrences of the character, that is to say, number of times it appears in the text.
• % : Frequency of occurrence of the character in the text in percent.
• Cum. % : Cumulative frequency in percent, that is to say, total frequency of this character and all the preceding ones.
By default characters are ordered by frequency. You can choose an other order by clicking the top of a row.
The two search fields at the bottom of the window allow you to write a character or its ASCII code to search it in the list.
The left hand search field is resizable (for asian input methods).
Pressing the small vertical button on the right side of these two fields erases their content.
• CaraCaraC Preferences fixes the default value of some items in the menus as well as the Punctuation list to be used when opening the application.
• Count the clipboard counts the text which has been copied into the clipboard.
• Open a CaraCaraC file allows you to open a CaraCaraC file.
• Save results as CaraCaraC file Creates a CaraCaraC file.
• Print results opens a window where you can select the columns you want to print (For an asian text, printing all the columns generally uses more than twenty pages !).
The order of the lines is the current order of results in the standard window.
The button Print opens the usual Mac OS printing window.
• if the Punctuation window is open, some more actions which concern the current list of punctuation marks are available : New list, Save, Save as, Delete and Print.
When counting a text or opening a CaraCaraC file, if old results are already displayed, new results may replace or be added to the previous ones according to the item chosen in the Replace/Add menu.
By default Replace is checked but Add may sometimes be useful, for instance when counting chapters of a same book or texts of same author.
The Window menu allows you to choose the form of the main window (standard or nano), and its color (black or grey).
It also allows you to open or close the Punctuation window.
The Help menu allows you to
• show the present CaraCaraC help window.
• show or hide helptags.
Unprintable characters and punctuation marks can be counted or not. It is easy to know whether a particular character is an unprintable character. It is sometimes difficult to decide whether it is a punctuation mark. A list of punctuation marks is always questionable.
The Punctuation window allows you to edit the list of punctuation marks. To open it use the window menu or click the round "P" button at the bottom of the standard window.
It is possible to create and modify lists of characters that CaraCaraC considers as punctuation marks. They are de facto lists of characters that you can choose to include or not when counting.
Any modification of the list instantaneously updates the results in the main window.
The list to be used when opening the application can be chosen in CaraCaraC Preferences.
The results displayed in CaraCaraC can be saved for a later use. Just choose Save results as CaraCaraC file in the File menu : a CaraCaraC file (.zhn) is created.
A CaraCaraC file can be opened in four different ways:
• Choose Open a CaraCaraC file in the File menu.
• Double-click on the icon of the file.
• Drag-and drop the file on the window of CaraCaraC.
• Drag-and drop the file on the icon of CaraCaraC.
CaraCaraC files created with the versions 1 or 2 of this application can be opened with the version 3, but only via the File / Open a CaraCaraC file menu.