Spellcheck: Make it useful, and easy to dismiss.

All this time I've had MUSHclient, and only now I've given the spellchecker a try... and it's exactly as I feared!

If I go to send a line, and don't want to finish the spellcheck, I would like to hit one key to dismiss the spellchecker, but still send the line. The 'Escape' key would be preferable. Currently, pressing 'Escape' does dismiss the spellcheck, but does not send the line.

What would be most useful, is the ability to only spellcheck by specific request. I would have nominated ALT-ENTER, but that combo is in use (as is CTRL-ENTER), so I would suggest SHIFT-ENTER. When SHIFT-ENTER is pressed, text on the command line is sent to the spellchecker for evaluation, otherwise it's not (or vice-versa, according to configuration).

After using the spellcheck, it's unclear what part of the interface is active. IE: Pressing "Delete" does not clear the highlighted text in the command box. Only mouse-clicking the command box seems to make that part of the interface active, but in doing so, unselects the text, which I must then manually, re-select to clear.

It doesn't look like there are any additional languages provided with the spellchecker. Quite often, spellcheckers are third party products. Is this the case here? A URL or advice on where to get additional languages would be useful in the help file for the spellchecker.

Finally, while chatting about this on AOD, I got a request to turn it on/off via hotkey. If there is one already, I don't know it.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
You can always disable "spellcheck on send"
option.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Yes. Magnum, simply turn off the 'spellcheck on send' and use the 'ctrl-j' command to spellcheck when you need to. ;)

As for other issues, I believe it is a third party app. Personally, my biggest gripe is that it is one of the sort of simplistic checkers you expected to find 10 years ago in word. 'Modern' ones check not just the correct spelling of words, but also to a limited degree the context and position of a word in the sentence. This lets them catch accidental mis-typing when you are rushed, like 'which' instead of 'witch' or even more common stupid mistakes. After all, it is still a spelling mistake, even if the word is techinically spelled right. Its nice to have the checker, but falls short of doing everything I would like to see and I don't use it much as a result.

That said, the escape issue not sending is I assume a simple thing to fix, though since there may be reasons for doing so that do not involve the intent to send anyway, I would prefer something like a 'send without checking' button, which I doubt as a third party product we are likely to suddenly see added. :p It is safer to use ctrl-j to activate the check when needed.

As for turning it on and off via a key, make a macro that calls an alias that does a "set option" of "spell_check_on_send".

The reason it doesn't send is that the idea was, if you have spell checking active, you wanted it spelled right before sending, so dismissing the spell checker box gave you a change to correct it.

My testing indicates that if you have text selected when going into the spell checker, it is still selected afterwards, and thus the interface behaves in a way you would expect.

You can get other dictionaries (the supplier is listed in the credits) - admittedly with no URL. That is:

http://www.wintertree-software.com/

However, the dictionaries are hundreds of dollars, and I decided against purchasing them for the occasional MUSHclient user who uses the spell checker, and who uses a different language. The British English dictionary is available from this site if you prefer that to American English.

As for grammar checking, yes that would be nice, but in MUDs a lot of the times you type things that are not good grammer anyway, eg.

get sword bag

A grammar checker is likely to start screaming about things like:

No initial capital letter
You should say "get the sword" not "get sword"
You should say "from the bag"
No closing period

And so on.

Shadowfyr is right, if you occasionally want to spell check, use the "spell check on request" key.

Ok, clearly I'm just not getting enough sleep, or ya'll are psychically linked in some manner.

Thanks for The CTRL-j tip. How the heck did you figure that out, Shadowfyr? (I couldn't find it documented). This will be perfect for my needs.

Oh, there it is, on the edit menu.

My testing indicates, I smoke the crack pipe too often. Ok, I am sure last night, I pasted stuff to the command box from a text file I was working in, Pressed enter while spell check was on in 'commands', and when spellcheck was done (using the mouse to press buttons), The command box had lost focus. This evening, I can't reproduce it. Someone is out to get me, I tell ya! ;)

Ah, the MUSHclient credits. Silly me, I looked in the Spellchecker help file. Oh! I'm immortalized in the MUSHclient credits! :)

I checked their site... and yes, they seem to want money for everything. I would prefer the Brit Dict., it's closer to Canadian English. Hmm, where is it? Ah, found it.

ftp://ftp.gammon.com.au/mushclient/british_dict.zip

Ok, my sleeping really has been wrecked lately, and although I thought I was with it last night, I guess I wasn't.

Search the help or online documentation for "spell" - here is one of the links from it ...


http://www.gammon.com.au/scripts/doc.php?command=SpellCheck


If you use the new SpellCheckCommand script function, you can modify the plugin slightly to still send the command, even if the spell checker is dismissed.

How exactly do you actuvate it or whatnot? It stays disabled for me most of the time, and I can't figure out at what point you need to use it before you send.

Do you mean you have trouble activating the spellchecker at all, or using it to spellcheck certain commands?

See this post:

http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/bbshowpost.php?bbsubject_id=4376&page=2

It describes a plugin script that you could make that spellchecks certain commands. Is that what you wanted, or something else?