While DokuWiki makes an excellent tool for lightweight word processing, it lacks one essential feature -- word count. Fortunately, this problem is easy to fix. The DokuWiki Tips page offers two simple scripts that add the word count capabilities to DokuWiki. The first script adds a simple counter to the text editing area, and the counter displays the number of words in the currently opened section as well as the total word count for the current page. The second script puts the counter at the top of the page and displays the character count in addition to the word count. Here is a slightly modified version of the script:

 /** 
 * Script to add a wordcounter on the edit form 
 * 
 * @author Andreas Gohr <andi@splitbrain.org> 
 * added charcounter by  Lars Flintzak 22.11.2008 
 * @license GPL 2 
 */ 
 
function wordcounter(text){ 
    var list = text.split(/[^\w\-_]+/); 
    var len  = list.length; 
    if(list[len-1] == '') len--; 
    if(list[0] == '') len--; 
    if(len < 0) len=0; 
    return len; 
} 
 
function charcounter(text){ 
    var list = text.split(/[^\w\-_]+/); 
    var len  = text.length; 
    if(list[len-1] == '') len--; 
    if(list[0] == '') len--; 
    if(len < 0) len=0; 
    return len; 
} 
 
addInitEvent(function(){ 
    var form = $('dw__editform'); 
    if(!form) return; 
 
    var div = document.createElement('div'); 
    div.id = 'word__counter__output'; 
    div.style.position = 'absolute'; 
    div.style.width    = '300px'; 
 
 
  /**  div.style.left     = '50px'; */ 
    div.style.left      = '240px'; 
    div.style.top      = '45px'; 
    div.style.color    = '#f00'; 
 
    form.appendChild(div); 
    var all = wordcounter(form.elements.prefix.value); 
        all += wordcounter(form.elements.suffix.value); 
 
    var zei_all = charcounter(form.elements.prefix.value); 
        zei_all += charcounter(form.elements.suffix.value); 
 
    addEvent(form.elements.wikitext,'keyup',function(){ 
        var len = wordcounter(form.elements.wikitext.value); 
        var zei = charcounter(form.elements.wikitext.value); 
        div.innerHTML = zei +" char in section | "+(zei_all+zei) + ' total char | '+len+' words in section | '+(all+len)+' total words';
    }); 
});

Copy the script and paste it into a new text file. Save the file as userscript.js and move it to the conf directory of your DokuWiki installation. Next time you open a page or section for editing, you should see the counter at the top of the page. The counter works in real-time, so the count updates as you type.