Spellcheck window issue

[BetterRed]

IMO: after it's been autosized on open, the width of the Word column should be resizable by the user. It's not uncommon to have some very long words due to hyphenation… there's a couple of examples in my screenshot in post 24. Words that get truncated after a word column resize could be elided.

BR

[KevinH]

Not needed as any stretch of the window grows the word column first, and an elided word is no help as you can not see all of it. So grow the dialog as much as you want to see the full word. Correct it and hit Refresh.

There is no single column sizing solution for a finite size dialog with variable length data in its columns. We have it autosize its columns based on their contents and always have.

That said, I can see not growing columns whose header label is longer than its contents but that is about it here.

So my question stands, would it help to move adding the headers *after* we resize the columns for contents (see posted image) or not? It will effectively minimize the contents of the last 3 columns and hopefully prevent the need to manually resize them constantly.

If not, I will simply leave things as they are now and people who care can tweak the header translations to re-size columns as they do now.

Please let me know. Thanks.

[elibrarian]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Not needed as any stretch of the window grows the word column first, and an elided word is no help as you can not see all of it. So grow the dialog as much as you want to see the full word. Correct it and hit Refresh.

There is no single column sizing solution for a finite size dialog with variable length data in its columns. We have it autosize its columns based on their contents and always have.

I think you've explained that before (which was why I sorted the problem for myself in the first place, by changing the headers).

Originally Posted by KevinH

So my question stands, would it help to move adding the headers *after* we resize the columns for contents (see posted image) or not? It will effectively minimize the contents of the last 3 columns and hopefully prevent the need to manually resize them constantly.

That could be a solution.

Originally Posted by KevinH

If not, I will simply leave things as they are now and people who care can tweak the header translations to re-size columns as they do now.

Well, it's simple enough and doesn't take much time, when one knows how to do it, so …

Regards,

Kim

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by elibrarian

I think you've explained that before (which was why I sorted the problem for myself in the first place, by changing the headers).



That could be a solution.



Well, it's simple enough and doesn't take much time, when one knows how to do it, so …

Regards,

Kim

Thanks for letting me know. I will make that change (not adding the headers until after the size of the columns is determined) for the next release. It can not hurt.

[PapaKilo]

Originally Posted by KevinH

If it will help, we could change the word "Misspelled" to "Error" or "Wrong" or "Typo" or "Bad" but we have no control over the length of the word chosen by various translators. A more descriptive explanation could be added to a Tooltip.

Just let me know if any of those would be better.

Well if the Misspelled column is useless unless the 'Show all words' is checked why don't you just not show the column if you don't have the 'Show all words' checked?

Just asking!

Paul

[KevinH]

Not changing it. Not worth my time or the effort. A column that is 4 chars wide after the change just committed is not enough screen real estate to worry about given the additional need for conditionals all throughout the code to access a possibly changing column number and layout depending only on a checkbox.

[Tex2002ans]

I randomly noticed this while poking around...

Bug #1: In Tools > Spellcheck > Spellcheck (Ctrl+Alt+Q)...

Is the "Language" or "Count" columns supposed to be double-clickable/editable?

I was able to double-click into those 2 columns and change the numbers/text...

I think they should be read-only.

(Seems like "Word"/"Misspelled" columns are fine.)

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I think the one on the left is better, it's from calibre.

Yes, full agree.

Calibre's "checkmark/nothing" column is much more readable than a giant column of "Yes/No".

The more redundant data you can throw out, the better for readability.

(And the power of Spellcheck Lists is the sheer amount of power/data you can shove in such a tiny space and "see-at-a-glance". )

Same exact info I wrote about it way back in 2022!

- - -

On Information Density + organizing data from most important > least important, I also wrote a similar post earlier this year in:

• /r/LibreOffice: "Good guides on making appealing Impress presentations?"
• /r/LibreOffice: "Sorting when 2nd row has to be kept together."
  • Where I showed if you "feel your eyes jumping around like lightning bolts"... something is wrong with the way you're storing it!
  • Compare before + after!
    
    • No more "lightning bolts"! Just eyes skimming straight across each row!
      

And, as always, one of the best videos I ever ran across on UI/UX was:

• "Music Software & Bad Interface Design: Avid’s Sibelius" (2018) by Tentacrul
• "Music Software & Interface Design: MuseScore" (2019) by Tentacrul

Watching those videos helped open my eyes on little annoyances/inconsistencies/inefficiencies like this building up all over the place.

- - -

Side Note: And, when I finally reopened Sigil 2.3.1 after my nearly year-long hiatus from MR, I definitely had some "fresh eyes".

Plenty of little little things that were "invisible" to me before, because I just got used to it after working with it daily for 12+ years, but now I see can use some improvement.

- - -

On Readability of Spellcheck Lists

If it was up to me, I'd flip the "Miss?" column to go all the way to the left + swap it for checkmarks like Calibre.

So you'd go from this:

Current Sigil 2.3.1:

Word        | Count | Language | Misspelled?
------------|-------|----------|------------
Apples           1    English     No
Bananas          2    English     No
Carrots          3    English     No
Paers          100    English     Yes
Tomatoes        10    English     No

After:

Miss? | Word        | Count | Language
------|-------------|-------|----------
        Apples           1    English
        Bananas          2    English
        Carrots          3    English
✓       Paers          100    English
        Tomatoes        10    English

This would rank it from most important -> least important, while still maximizing readability.

Heck, maybe even shifting the number too:

? | Count | Word        Language
--|-------|-----------|----------
      1    Apples       English
      2    Bananas      English
      3    Carrots      English
✓   100    Paers        English
     10    Tomatoes     English

This would especially help when the "Language" (or "Word") column sometimes grows enormously wide.

Compare with big words/language:

Current:

Word                             | Count | Language                 | Misspelled?
---------------------------------|-------|--------------------------|------------
Apples                                1     German - Liechtenstein     No
Bananas                               2     German - Liechtenstein     No
Carrots                               3     German - Liechtenstein     No
PaersReallyLongWordIsReallyLong     100     German - Liechtenstein     Yes
Tomatoes                             10     German - Liechtenstein     No

After:

? | Count | Word                             | Language
--|-------|----------------------------------|-----------------------
      1    Apples                             German - Liechtenstein
      2    Bananas                            German - Liechtenstein
      3    Carrots                            German - Liechtenstein
✓   100    PaersReallyLongWordIsReallyLong    German - Liechtenstein
     10    Tomatoes                           German - Liechtenstein

In that case:

1. If "Word" column grows huge, it doesn't really matter, because all the important info stays in the same exact spot. (Along the left-most edge.)

(And it doesn't matter how short/ginormous a word becomes, the numbers are ALWAYS right up against it. )

2. Who cares if "Language" grows huge, it's in the "least important"/"end" column, so it can easily be cut/cropped or tuned-out by your brain.

(But in the original layout, you're CONSTANTLY "jumping over it" to look at the Misspelled column.)

See the IMAGE of where my eyes focus to see if a word is misspelled (or getting the word count) between the 2 versions:



In the update, your eyes are ALWAYS staying in that very narrow band of columns 1/2/3. Never going 1/2/4.

3. If you toggle "Show All Words", the UI barely budges.

[KevinH]

I will make those 2 columns non-editable (ie read only).

[DiapDealer]

I've grown quite weary of the slightly nitpicky (not to mention highly subjective) column width/order/content conversation.

As Kevin already mentioned: we will not be moving to checkmarks, or changing to cryptic, shorter header text (or hiding columns based on checkbox selections). Nor will we be changing the established order of the columns. Kevin's already pushed a change that will keep the last three columns minimized. After making the above columns mentioned read-only, I'm of the opinion that this is as wrapped up as it's going to get. Sorry if that disappoints a few.

[KevinH]

I agree with DiapDealer here. Most of the requested changes are highly subjective. For example, when editing a document with proper language tags in a multi-language epub (and there are many with latin, or french, or german terms in them) the language column may be paramount to finding and detecting both spelling errors and additional text whose tags need lang attributes to be properly set.

Similar arguments can be use for misspelled column when foreign words with language specific spelling variations are present.

I personally like to see all words then sort first on the word then second on misspelled to focus on one subset first.

Sorting based on language is also useful at times.

This is a zero sum change as what helps one may hurt another. Especially after a long history of using them as they are.

Sizing the last three columns before adding the headers, and fixing columns that should not be editable, clearly should benefit everyone.

I do not feel that way about the other requests. Especially as they may disturb long time users.

If we never had a spell check dialog and we were designing a new one from scratch, many of the arguments put forward here would be useful. But we are not. Maybe for a future completely redesigned Sigil 5.0 long after I have retired from developing Sigil ...


Update: Just pushed the fix to master to make count and Language columns not editable. This fix will appear in the next release of Sigil.

[shopma2]

I like this edit because I get bored re-setting the columns every time I have fixed misspelled word. And I won't buy a lot of real-estate just for this.
Remember, whenever you buy something, you have to bin something else.
Best wishes for the new year, all!

[theducks]

I would love to have the spell check, when it has a possible (lang not specified) alternate language word, suggest and wrap it in a <span lang=...>\1</span> if accepted.

[KevinH]

Have you tried adding that span and lang in the Change To field? If that works, something to wrap a word in a span tag should be doable.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Have you tried adding that span and lang in the Change To field? If that works, something to wrap a word in a span tag should be doable.

Wrapping in a span is what I do now, (I also have to guess what language is best).
I find it amazing how cross pollinated our language has become.
What becomes hilarious is when a phrase comes full circle. All courtesy of military servicemen
Easy Street -> Became Hunki Dori (in Japan) -> became Hunky Dory back here