[Tex2002ans]

While I was gathering this info, I believe I found a bug in Sigil 1.9.10:

1. Paste this code into a book:

<p>This is an example of a <i>sentence-ender</i>. That continues for another sentence.</p>

2. Press Tools > Spellcheck > Spellcheck.

3. Search: .

The period after "sentence-ender" will show up as a "word" by itself.

(Because of the closing italic + .)

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Enhancement Request: Think we could get the Spellcheck List "Count" column aligned right?

Similar to my 2021 Reports columns alignment request!

For easier readability/comparability.

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Enhancement Request #2: Think we could get the "Language" + "Mispelled?" columns flipped?

Before:

Word        | Count | Language               | Misspelled?
____________|_______|________________________|_____________
example     | 1     | English (United States)| No
examples    | 2     | English (United States)| No
exampled    | 3     | English (United States)| No
exampleness | 4     | English (United States)| Yes
español     | 5     | Spanish                | No

After:

Word        | Count | Misspelled? | Language
____________|_______|_____________|_____________
example     | 1     | No          | English (United States)
examples    | 2     | No          | English (United States)
exampled    | 3     | No          | English (United States)
exampleness | 4     | Yes         | English (United States)
español     | 5     | No          | Spanish

I think that would really help with readability.

Plus, if you didn't care about Language, you could easily resize the window slightly to chop it off. :P

(And some of those Languages are REALLY verbose!)

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Originally Posted by DiapDealer

But I have to ask: why waste time being grumpy when you can substitute your own hunspell library (or libraries) that work exactly like you want? There's no point in suffering when the workaround is easy enough is there?

Yes, yes, I know.

But for a common user (like Mbear or GreggBell) to know where to dig and "fix this" and substitute with an old hunspell, it's just madness.

Put a foot in the normal human's shoes for a second!

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Introductory Note: I believe making this acronym/sentence-ender optional would help, similar to:

• Edit > Preferences > Spellcheck Dictionaries
• "Check Numbers" checkbox

Maybe that UI can be adjusted slightly, and a new checkbox introduced:

• Check Periods
  
  • Off = pre-Sigil 1.9.1
    
  • On = Sigil 1.9.1
    

(Or some much better name. )

(And, personally, I'd argue for it to be OFF by default. See reasoning below.)

(Advanced users can then turn it ON if needed—just like "Check Numbers".)

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The Big Picture on Closing-Periods-as-Words

The largest problem I have is:

• The # of hits you have to look through explodes.
  
  • Nearly doubling.
• Word Counts are thrown off.

The entire purpose—and extreme power—of Spellcheck Lists is to be able to compare/sort + get accurate counts.

This allows you to quickly see, at-a-glance, problems which would have otherwise been hidden or very hard to spot:

peeked    |   5
peaked    |   1
Rothbard  | 100
Rothbird  |   2
Rotbard   |   1
Malone    |  20
Molone    |   2
Mises     |  50
Misses    |   3

What Sigil 1.9.10 does, is something like this:

peeked    |   3
peeked.   |   2
peaked    |   1
Rothbard  |  60
Rothbard. |  40
Rothbird  |   1
Rothbird. |   1
Rotbard   |   1
Malone    |  19
Malone.   |   1
Molone    |   1
Molone.   |   1
Mises     |  40
Mises.    |  10
Misses.   |   3

We've gone from 9 -> 15 hits, and potential typos get buried in the morass of:

• word
• + same exact word.
• new word
• + same exact new word.

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Lost in the Clutter

For example, before, these show up right next to each other:

Spoiler:

Rothbard
Rothbird <--- This looks strange
Rotbard  <--- This is 1 character short, definitely stands out.

peeked
peaked   <--- 1 letter diff.

Malone
Molone   <--- 1 letter diff.

Mises
Misses   <--- 1 character extra, definitely stands out.

Now, you have a "visual clutter" full of:

Spoiler:

3 -> 5
Rothbard
Rothbard.
Rothbird  <--- Doesn't look like a typo, at a glance
Rothbird. <--- because it "shows up twice".
Rotbard


2 -> 3
peeked
peeked.
peaked  <--- Hard to spot because word above isn't
             same exact size-but-one-letter-diff.

2 -> 4
Malone
Malone.
Molone  <--- I probably wouldn't check this name because
Molone. <--- it shows up twice + looks like any other.


2 -> 3
Mises
Mises.  <--- This type's especially hard to spot
Misses       because the '.' is EVERYWHERE, so it
             "merges" in with the extra 's' in the word below

This at-a-glanceness gets worse when you SORT by Count:

Spoiler:

Rothbard   100
Mises       50
Malone      20
peeked       5
Misses       3
Molone       2
Rothbird     2
peaked       1
Rotbard      1

Rothbard   60
Mises      40
Rothbard.  40
Malone     19
Mises.     10
Misses.     3
peeked      3
peeked.     2
Malone.     1
Molone      1
Molone.     1
peaked      1
Rotbard     1
Rothbird    1
Rothbird.   1

How many times did "Malone" show up in this book? 20 times.

But not according to the period-sort! 19+1.

• Before, typos showed up in rows right near each other.
  
  • Now, typos are "hidden" with periods.
    
  • What would have been 1 correct + 1 typo becomes 1/2 correct + 1/2 typos.
    
• Before, counts gave you real word counts.
  
  • After, they give you partial word counts.
    
  • And they'll appear far apart from each other + have to manually be added.
    

This makes comparison extremely hard.

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Side Note: One of most common typos is seeing a spelling 10+ times, and a similar spelling 1 time, think:

color   | 10
colour  |  1

Now, it shows up as:

color   |  9
color.  |  1
colour  |  1

You might not see "colour", because it's not "10 vs. 1" but "1 vs. 1"!

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See some comparison images.

Before vs. After:




Much fewer words per screen, and near-words (or typos) get lost under all the "duplicate periods".

Plus, your eyes are always "stutter-stepping", because of the:

• 1 character smaller
• + 1 character bigger
• 1 character smaller
• + 1 character bigger
  • Oh, great, another period...

When 99% of these extra "words" are duplicate periods... your brain turns off.

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That's the major problems, as I see it, but I've got many other intermediate/smaller ones too.

Here's a few I picked out of the last book I worked on:

Problem #1: Indexes/PageNumbers (especially roman numerals)

Similar to Spellcheck Lists in Calibre getting flooded with numbers, this index/roman numeral issue also kicks it up to 1000!

You get hundreds and hundreds of extra:

i.
ii.
ix.
I.
II.
III.

clogging almost every single search—again, drowning out many of the otherwise at-a-glance issues.

Problem #2: URLs Lost

One trick I love/d to use is a period to find yet-to-be-linked URLs in a book:



URLs are completely lost in Spellcheck Lists now.

Not just by (partial) acronyms but by every single sentence now too!

Problem #3: URL "sentence-enders"

I've seen lots of nearly-doubling:

• example.com
• example.com.
• example.gov
• example.gov.
• example.pdf
• example.pdf.
• exaample.pdf
  
  • (Again, this is a very common area for typos to hide.)

When you work on citations, this becomes a huge problem!

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Do I need to continue? I have lots more examples!

The current way of Sigil's new default spellchecking is unlike any other program there is—and not in the good way!

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Anyway, like I said, a nice, easy-to-use checkbox would be a nice addition. (OFF by default!)

Then we could say:

• "Hey, Mbear! Do you want this weird, advanced way of spellchecking?"
• "Go into Preferences > Spellcheck Dictionaries and enable those 2 boxes!"

Those users who know what they are doing + have specific cases for it can enable it.

But for the love of all that is holy, put advanced stuff as options for the advanced users!

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PS. I still love you, KevinH and Diap, but sometimes I want to just hug your little necks with two hands!