Spelling checker

Spelling checker

The spelling checker comes in two flavors: dialog checking and "on the fly" checking.

On the fly spell checking

40tude HTML offers on the fly spell checking as you might know it from Microsoft Word. To enable this feature select "Options -> Spell check options -> On the fly in the current/On the fly in all documents" from the main menu.

With on the fly checking each word in a document will be automatically checked and will get underlined with a red toothed line. To correct a misspelled word right click on the word and select from one of the available actions (see below to find out more).

Dialog checking

To use the spell checking task, select it from one of the task menu items (see Overview of tasks).

When the spell checking is finished the total number of checked words is shown in the statusbar of the main window.

Actions when a misspelled word is found

The Change All button will replace all occurrences of the misspelled word with the word in the "Replace With:" edit field, while the Change button replaces only the current occurrence of the misspelled word.

The Ignore All button will ignore the word thought to be misspelled throughout the rest of the spell check, while the Ignore button will only ignore the current occurrence.

The Add button adds the word in the "Not Found:" edit field to the user dictionary specified in the configuration.

The Auto-Correct button adds the words in the "Not Found" edit field and the "Replace With" edit field to the current user dictionary (specified in the Configuration) as an auto-correct pair. Any future occurrence of the presumed misspelled word will then be replaced with the correct spelling automatically. This is useful for common spelling mistakes, such as recieve:receive and teh:the.

The Suggest button in dialog mode will, if possible, add additional word alternatives to the suggestions list.

The Start button in dialog mode is used to restart a spell check session from the current cursor position if the spell check window lost focus in favor of another window in the current application. This gives freedom of movement, allowing you to edit the document being checked without ending the current spell check session.

The Undo Last button in dialog mode restores the last spell check action performed and reselects the previous misspelled word (if possible). This button can be pressed multiple times to undo multiple operations.

The Options button shows a window allowing you to set spell check configuration options

Spell checker options

To open the spell checker options window select "Settings -> Spell check options -> Options" or click on the "Options" button while doing a dialog based check.

The "Dictionaries" page of the configuration window controls which main dictionaries and user dictionaries are active during the spell check.

In both the main and user dictionary lists the checkbox to the left of the item indicates whether or not a specific dictionary is active. To change the active status, simply click on this checkbox.

To add an already existing dictionary to the list, click on the Add button. When adding a preexisting user dictionary, Microsoft Word user dictionaries (.DIC file extension) may also be used. To delete a dictionary already in the list, click on the Remove button.

To form a new user dictionary, click on the New button.

The "Add Words To" selection box lets you specify which user dictionary new words and auto-corrections are to be added to. This must be an active user dictionary (and not a Microsoft Word user dictionary).

The "Options" page of the configuration window controls specific configuration options related to the spell check.

Ignore Options:

The "Words in UPPERCASE" checkbox, when checked, forces the spelling checker to skip any words completely in uppercase. This can be useful for ignoring abbreviations.

The "Words Containing Numbers" checkbox, when checked, forces the spelling checker to skip any words that may contain one or more numeric characters. This can be useful for ignoring license plates and other partially numeric words. This can also be somewhat detrimental if a numeric key was pressed instead of a character by mistake.

The "HTML Tags" checkbox, when checked, forces the spelling checker to skip any HTML tags encountered (i.e. text between opening and closing angle brackets).

The "URLs and E-mail Addresses" checkbox, when checked, forces the spelling checker to skip any e-mail addresses or world wide web addresses found in the document.

The Reset Ignore All button removes any words previously added to the "Ignore All" list. Words previously in the list will no longer be ignored when encountered.

The Reset Change All button removes any word sequences added to the "Change All" list. Words matching added to the "Change All" list will no longer be automatically replaced.

Suggest Options:

The "Generate Automatically" checkbox, when checked, forces the spelling checker to make suggestions for replacement of a word as soon as a misspelled word is located. If this option is not checked, no suggestions are given initially.

The "From Primary Dictionary Only" checkbox, when checked, forces all suggestions to be constructed from the primary dictionary only. If the option is not checked, then suggestions are generated from each main dictionary. The primary dictionary is the first dictionary in the main dictionaries list

General Options:

The "Re-check Replaced Words" checkbox, when checked, forces the spell checker to re-check words that it has replaced as a result of a change or change all operation. This is a useful feature to counteract the occasional spelling mistake that may occur when typing a corrected word.

The "Convert special characters for checking" checkbox, when checked, makes sure that before a dialog based spell check starts HTML equivalents of extended character like ü are converted to real characters. These characters will be reconverted once the spell check is finished.

If "Disable word wrap while checking" is checked, word wrap is temporary disabled during the check.


Last change: June 08, 2001 - © Softwareentwicklung Marcus Monnig

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