Undo in "Check Spelling" tool?

[Phssthpok]

Is there a way to undo changes using the Check Spelling dialog? Sometimes I accidentally press "Change selected word to:" and it changes the currently-selected word to the first suggestion in the list. If I'm not paying enough attention and don't see what the first suggestion was (or if the suggestion was a common word that occurs many times anyway), the only way I know of to recover from this is to quit the editor without saving, thereby losing all my other unsaved changes together with the erroneous spelling correction.

Surely there must be a better way to recover when this happens? What am I missing this time?

[eschwartz]

Don't global changes always create a checkpoint?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Phssthpok

Is there a way to undo changes using the Check Spelling dialog? Sometimes I accidentally press "Change selected word to:" and it changes the currently-selected word to the first suggestion in the list. If I'm not paying enough attention and don't see what the first suggestion was (or if the suggestion was a common word that occurs many times anyway), the only way I know of to recover from this is to quit the editor without saving, thereby losing all my other unsaved changes together with the erroneous spelling correction.

Surely there must be a better way to recover when this happens? What am I missing this time?

For a Single (replace selected word), the Undo button will revert:
IF The target section (Tab) has focus.
To locate the misspelled word occurrence, Double-click the word in the right-side list Great way to context check

What it does or how to find where it WAS after the fact is a different story.

[MerlinMama]

Originally Posted by Phssthpok

Surely there must be a better way to recover when this happens? What am I missing this time?

If it is one word that you can't hit undo because it affects multiple files, and if you've seen what it corrected to, you can uncheck the box that says 'Show only misspelled words', then browse to the word and fix it from there. Then re-check the box and keep going.

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Don't global changes always create a checkpoint?

In my experience (maybe I did something wrong, or it's changed since then), revert brings me to before the last global change BEFORE I started spellcheck, but all changes made in spellcheck stay changed. Not helpful at all and causes much confusion.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by MerlinMama

In my experience (maybe I did something wrong, or it's changed since then), revert brings me to before the last global change BEFORE I started spellcheck, but all changes made in spellcheck stay changed. Not helpful at all and causes much confusion.

Well, then, obviously this particular global change does not create a checkpoint first.
I would consider that to be a bug.

[kovidgoyal]

You are welcome to create a checkpoint manually before you start a spellcheck. Although, IMO, that would be fairly useless, since what you want is not to undo all changed words, just one or two (which is why no automatic global checkpoint is created).

[eschwartz]

I think it's reasonable to auto-create a checkpoint.

Spellcheck can be totally reverted then redone more carefully. It seems to be the most advantageous reaction to mistaken changes. (Short of creating a checkpoint before each change).
Better than losing all the work before you started spellcheck.



Please reconsider.

[kovidgoyal]

I really dont see the need, say you are doing a spell check and you mistakenly replace the word xxx with yyy. All that means is you stop the spell check, run a search and replace for yyy, and replace all matches either one-by-one or automatically, depending.

There seems to be no need to lose all the previous correct spelling changes, just to undo a single bad change.

[eschwartz]

Because doing the opposite replacement is not the same as undoing a replacement.
What happens if you already have valid uses of the replaced-by word?
That will very likely be the case -- and your proposed "go through it one by one" is slow. It would probably be faster to redo all the correct spelling fixes (they are usually less ambiguous and possibly less numerous too).



I'd rather undo all correct spelling changes, to get into a known good (or at least better than when I first started out) state, then redo all the spelling fixes. It really does seem to me to be the safest route.

[MerlinMama]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I really dont see the need, say you are doing a spell check and you mistakenly replace the word xxx with yyy. All that means is you stop the spell check, run a search and replace for yyy, and replace all matches either one-by-one or automatically, depending.

There seems to be no need to lose all the previous correct spelling changes, just to undo a single bad change.

I have occasionally accidentally double-clicked on the 'correct' button. It went by quick and I didn't get a chance to see what word I was 'correcting' with that second click. In that case, all I know is it was after the intended corrected word, and before the next word in the list, but that still leaves it wide open.

Another example (less likely but I've done it ). I skip four or five words because I need to check something, but the following several words I know need to be corrected. They are words I know that the first suggestion is the correct one I want, so I hit correct the amount of times. Only then do I notice that after the first correct, the word to change went UP rather than DOWN, so I was actually correcting the words I skipped. Yes, this is a lack of attention, but it CAN happen. So, I need to lose all that I've already done, and start over.

Just to laugh (now that it’s over) I once had a book that had reproduced Scottish brogue so it showed up over 700 'errors'. Mixed in there liberally were real mistakes. When I was about 80% done, I got distracted and corrected things that should have been ignored, and ignored things that have been corrected. I had to START OVER!!!

[kovidgoyal]

Sorry, I am not convinced. And as I said, if you prefer to undo everything, you can create a checkpoint manually before starting the spell check.

[Phssthpok]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I really dont see the need, say you are doing a spell check and you mistakenly replace the word xxx with yyy. All that means is you stop the spell check, run a search and replace for yyy, and replace all matches either one-by-one or automatically, depending.

There seems to be no need to lose all the previous correct spelling changes, just to undo a single bad change.

In the case that prompted me to ask this question, the word was "ith" (should have been "with", but the "w" was consistently missing) and it autocorrected to "it". Not an easy one to reverse -- "it" is a much more common word than "yyy"!

[Phssthpok]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Sorry, I am not convinced. And as I said, if you prefer to undo everything, you can create a checkpoint manually before starting the spell check.

However, if I make a mistake after correcting 100+ errors, I have to roll back and then redo the 100+ corrections.

I could hit "save" after every correction, but why not provide an undo snapshot in the same way as for "replace all", rather than putting the burden on the user to be perfect all the time?

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Phssthpok

I could hit "save" after every correction, but why not provide an undo snapshot in the same way as for "replace all", rather than putting the burden on the user to be perfect all the time?

Because nothing in life is free. Creating checkpoints after ever replace would add a huge performance cost.

[MerlinMama]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Because nothing in life is free. Creating checkpoints after ever replace would add a huge performance cost.

I see a compromise, but that is from my viewpoint, it might not be in terms of implementation.

When SpellCheck is launched, it automatically creates a checkpoint, for those who might not know to do so, and for those others who might simply forget or think they did but got distracted.

And/Or

In SpellCheck, have a 'create checkpoint' button. It will be there in SpellCheck where attention is, and might give everyone a 'fighting chance'.