Getting the word count of a pdf document in Evince

You can do this via command line:

pdftotext filename.pdf - | tr -d '.' | wc -w

How about a quick bash script requiring zenity and evince. When called without an argument, it'll give you a dialogue box so you can choose a file. When called with an argument (or after said dialogue box), it'll both open the file in evince and give you a dialogue box with a word count.

In other words, copy the following into a text file, called evince-word-count.sh or something, save it somewhere in your path (e.g., ~/bin/), make it executable (either through Nautilus's right click and properties or with chmod +x ~/bin/evince-word-count.sh),

#!/bin/bash
if [ "$#" -gt "0" ] ; then
    filename="$1"
else
    filename="$(zenity --file-selection)"
fi
evince "$filename" &
zenity --info --text "This PDF has $(pdftotext "$filename" - | tr -d '.' | wc -w) words"
exit 0

Now, right click on some on some PDF in nautilus, choose "Open with..." and then have it open with evince-word-count.sh. Now, when you open a PDF, it'll both open in evince, and give you a word count.