Sigil Spell Checker Coming~ soon?

[sjkramer]

While a spellchecker would be a nice feature, my feeling is that it must take a lot of time/energy (and possibly money) to get a well-constructed, well-functioning one (witness Indesign's miserable checker). As there's quite a bit that needs to be done to get Sigil to do the things it needs to be able to do specifically for ebooks, it does not seem like working on one would be the very best use of the developers' limited time. I understand that others may disagree, but I thought I'd give me two cents.

[user_none]

Spell checking itself is very easy. See this for underlying misspellings and this for adding possible corrections to the right click menu. Both of those are from a Markdown editor I wrote in Python. The only challenge will be translating that into C++ (thankfully I used Python bindings to C++ libraries) and making it more robust.

[sjkramer]

Originally Posted by user_none

Spell checking itself is very easy.

Great! Well, it will certainly be appreciated by me. Now on to the question of why so many spell checkers are lousy. Maybe the mechanism isn't the difficult part, it's the choice of source dictionary. Generally they're so limited—or don't include many common word forms—that spell checking is more trouble than it's worth.

[Hitch]

I love Word Web, but that's not a spell-checker, unfortunately.

H.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by sjkramer

Great! Well, it will certainly be appreciated by me. Now on to the question of why so many spell checkers are lousy. Maybe the mechanism isn't the difficult part, it's the choice of source dictionary. Generally they're so limited—or don't include many common word forms—that spell checking is more trouble than it's worth.

I tend to add a bunch of words to my personal dictionary. After a while the dictionary feature becomes quite useful. Without a personal dictionary they are not nearly as good.

Dale

[harriska2]

user_none, how would one go about adding those 2 files for use in sigil? I'm using 4.2 on windows 7... Looks like the code would do the trick for me.

[user_none]

Originally Posted by harriska2

user_none, how would one go about adding those 2 files for use in sigil? I'm using 4.2 on windows 7... Looks like the code would do the trick for me.

Those two files are an example implementation of spell checking in a text editor. They cannot be used with or in Sigil. You will have to wait until a version with spell check us released.

[cybmole]

microspell can be made to work with Sigil, if you must have a spellchecker right now

[Hitch]

I use Microspell, but I think most people find it overwhelming.

Hitch

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I use Microspell, but I think most people find it overwhelming.

Hitch

as in overwhelmingly bad UI :-)

in an ideal world I'd also like a grammar checker. MS word has one.

some nuances still elude me & fail the "that doe not look quite right" test, but are a pain to google

e.g. does a comma go inside or outside of speech mark:
"follow me," or "follow me",

what sort of dash goes in interrupted speech:
"wait-" OR "wait—"

and where should the spaces go in compound dashed phrases like
black- or white-stripes

[Hitch]

IF you're interested:

In US-English, the comma goes inside the quote, even if the original quoted matter did not have the comma; in Brit/Can English, it goes outside.

Interrupted speech is properly indicated by an EMdash, not an ENdash (US convention), and

There should not be spaces in compound dashed phrases, in print layout. In eBooks, in which we have hyphenation issues (as in, none), it's a matter of personal choice/style, to make the "rivers of white" look less onerous; I usually pick the word after the emdash, so that the dash shows up at the end of the line and not the beginning, if it breaks near the end of a line.

;-)

HTH,
Hitch

[cybmole]

so USA would read "thanks ," he said. "That's helpful."
but UK would read "thanks", he said. "That's helpful".

i.e. I should put punctuation inside the speech marks.

Then this—or that—option is how it should be done in print.

the MS Word grammar checker seems not to care whether spaces are added

are there web sites/text books that have all these rules, for future reference ?

[Jellby]

I have always seen punctuation inside quote marks in speech, in English books, US or UK. When it's not part of a speech (or rather, when the reason for the quotes is not literal quoting), then it's usually US inside, UK outside:

US: "And that's it," he said. "So we call him 'the buccaneer.'"
UK: 'And that's it,' he said. 'So we call him "the buccaneer".'

[Hitch]

Jellby: To confirm, in US, at least, even in literal quoting, it is punctuation marks inside the ". ;-) This is ONLY TRUE for periods and commas, though, which I should have remembered to state last night. This is not true for colons, semi-colons, question marks and Exclamation marks. Colons and semi-colons go OUTSIDE the quotation marks; question marks and exclamation marks go outside if not part of the original quotation, and inside if they were.

Yeah, I know, English--great, ain't it?

Um...cybmole, Purdue has an EXCELLENT reference site, particularly for anyone working in EASL, if that is your case. Very clear, detailed itemization...let me see if I can find the link. Here's a page (you can find your way about easily from here: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/1/ )

...and, for those of you authoring as well as converting, please, please, please, please: kill the 4-dot ellipsis. It does NOT exist. It's a pet peeve of mine (okay, not as bad as "irregardless," but, still).

Hitch

[Rand Brittain]

I'm really looking forward to the appearance of the plugin system for Sigil, so someone can make a plugin that will spot English-style punctuaton and convert it to US-style, or vice-versa. Doing it manually to suit myself is annoying.