feature: spell check

[imajeff]

I wonder why I don't see ANYONE requesting the feature to check
spelling, at least in notes!

My colleague brought it up after using MLO over a year. Of course I
tried to convince him to request it here. I almost had him until he
said, "Oh you have to register for google groups?" Apparently he
thinks that is too hard to do. He even has a Yahoo groups id [*shesh*
I think he's just scared to post :]

[Steve Wynn]

Hi,

 

If you really need a spell check you could try - All Purpose Spell Checker APSC http://www.buzzys.net/spellcheck.html its like a standalone spell checker that sits in the system tray. Personally I don't mind if MLO has a spell checker or not to  be honest. So many other applications have them, that I use regularly, that in a worse case scenario I just copy the info to one of those and check if I need to be sure. But more of the time I don't view spelling as being important within MLO, preferring speed of data entry to a few mistakes.

 

Personally I would say if it can be added with minimum overhead fine, but if it bloats MLO with dictionary files etc. Personally I would leave it out.

All the best

Steve.

[Andrey Ekaterenchuk]

+1 to Steve; and, for example, Firefox has builtin spellchecker :)

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[Toes_NZ]

Agree with Steve Wynn on this one.

Cheers

ToesNZ

[Graham Foster]

http://www.tinyspell.m6.net/
Very configurable spellchecker (which is still being enhanced). 2
versions - free and paid-for. The paid-for is pretty cheap, and it
works quite well. Does auto-correction too
Graham

[Martin.G]

Hi

I have used AsUtype (www.asutype.com) for a few years. It allows
spell checking, entering autotext, autocorrection etc.

Given the number of options out there, I don't see that it would be
worthwhile integrating directly into MLO.

Martin

[Mark Levison]

+1 for Steve. In addition the last thing I want is yet another spell checker that I have to train on my computer. Currently I have:
1) Office (Word, Outlook, ...)
2) Firefox
3) My Development Enviroments Eclipse/Visual Studio
4) IM program
5) My Blogging tool
....

You get the idea. Please don't add another spell checker to my computer.

Cheers
Mark Levison
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[imajeff]

Thanks I appreciate the input, both possible solutions and possible
drawbacks. I'm a little concerned because the msg from too many of ya
is, "Agree with Steve Wynn on this one"...

I hope you will understand, there was not really a
"disagreement" (unless you didn't agree with Steve), not at least by
what all you have posted.

Of course we don't want to add bloat; certainly is not the way to get
it done. When my buddy made the suggestion, I know he was not
requesting that a naive programmer go out and write a bloated
solution, even though that's what happens too often. Do you understand
that many spell checkers (aspell, etc.) are designed to be used
directly by apps such as MLO, and for the very purpose of making this
simple as we want it? Naturally there are hundreds of "standalone"
sell-check solutions... Why else would they exist except that
certainly it IS needed that bad :)

I get the feeling from some comments that you would prefer to do some
multiple copy/paste just to check something in MLO. Well I just hope
you realize that it is not what you want. I guess you're just trying
to guess that the only way

Now about what I call the "Microsoft way"... I'm puzzled whether some
of you know that you will get your problems solved much better if you
were using opensource-based systems. If only the masses were smart
enough to rebuke Microsoft and catch a ride on the GNU/Linux wagon.
You're all talking like you hate the "Microsoft way" because you
mention bloat, problem of re-creating the same solution over and over,
etc. I discovered there are too many users who don't realize that
their best solution would be any fairly supported Linux distribution.
Unfortunately, as my colleague said, as long as Linux is not
considered "most popular", it will never be the most popular. Well GTD
(Gee That's Dumb).

It would be a whole different thing, however, if one of those
solutions posted are actually able to check spelling from within MLO
while editing (the "as you type" sure sounds suspicious). So if that
is the case, then OF COURSE that's what we want... Then I would have
to ask, "Why didn't anyone say that, and what did you think we were
asking for?"

Thanks!

[Mark Levison]

I agreed with Steve because I don't want to spell check my MLO enteries. It's not important to getting stuff done. If things are mis-spelled I still know what they mean.

I'm not writing somewhere else and copying in, its just I don't care.

I'm voting against this feature because I don't want Andrey to spend time on it. Replacing the tree control is far more important to me.

Does this clarification help?

BTW Rereading my post I realize that this might come across as abrupt - its late and I have to run so I'm sorry that I didn't rewrite it.

Cheers
Mark

[imajeff]

> Personally I don't mind if MLO has a spell checker or not to  be honest. So many other applications have
> them, that I use regularly, that in a worse case scenario I just copy the info to one of those and check if I
> need to be sure. But more of the time I don't view spelling as being important within MLO, preferring speed
> of data entry to a few mistakes.

Let me explain a little where he thought he might need it. First of
all, he is not a "speller of words", if you know what I mean. If he
were to have to manually look up every word that he might spell in a
way that might cause confusion later, he would not have time to get
actual work done. Throw out the idea of manually "copy/paste back and
forth". The problem: He began to realize there are so many tasks being
rushed into the system, he cannot easily find specifics later. He uses
a search to find keywords in the notes. Problem is, since he is not a
consistent speller (though he's tried hard to improve that), he may be
in a lot of trouble because if one of the tasks is not included in
search results (because the keyword in it was spelled wrong), then it
can mess up the whole company flow. Obviously back when he kept this
all on paper, the task would not have been missed because he would not
rely on exact spelling to tell if that task meets his search criteria.

Hence, any solution would need to
1. help him be consistent in spelling of the keywords in tasks
2. not slow him down in the task entry except of course when error is
detected

From what I see MLO would greatly benefit, and in some cases even
speed up and reduce bloating, if they used open source tools for
things like spell checking.

[Steve Wynn]

Hi,

 

I can see the point to an extent in that scenario. But even with a spell checker, it really depends on the keyword being used. The spell checker could replace incorrectly spelt words, with incorrect words. I notice in a lot of emails Andrey gets automatically replaced with Andre, via the spell checker.  So reliance on a spell checker, even for the worse speller, can add its own dimension of issues.

  

Now personally I would be more in favour of some sort of keyword grouping, where a defined keyword is assigned to a task.  So once it is defined, it can be allocated to a task via a drop-down selection or something. In that respect it wouldn't matter if you spelt it right or wrong, as long as you consistently used the same selection. So in essence you could place tasks in a category or a group, other than contexts. 

 

Personally to me MLO isn't the type of application that needs a spell checker, but I don't mind if MLO has a spell checker. As long as it not obtrusive and gets in the way of quick data entry. I would hate it if it pulled me up on every other word I typed. Having a specific spell checker for just notes could be an option, but even then people probably have higher priorities with regards to notes such as bullet points, tables, formatting issues, export to different formats etc. But I would say if the notes section was to get revamped, that a spell checker should definitely be considered as one of the options.

 

All the best

 

Steve

 

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: imajeff  
To: MyLifeOrganized  

[Frank Vanhoof]

I'll agree a spell checker in MLO would be nice. However Steve makes a
good point that the spell checker functionality should not get in the
way of entering tasks. I should also be able to turn it off. I prefer
the Microsoft Office (and Firefox) model of putting a small red line
under the suspect word since this allows you to continue on and come
back to the misspelling later. I would imaging Andre could use the
built in spell check API for that comes with Microsoft Office. The
does come with the drawback that only users of Office would reap the
benefits of this feature. Firefox also has a built in spell check
feature that is very similar. I'm not familiar enough with Firefox
development to know if they expose that API. Personally I think it's a
nice to have, but not on my top 5.

[Andrey Ekaterenchuk]

I agree with last 3 messages and i think that would be nice use one of
freeware dictionary in MLO optionaly :) In that case Andrey can write
some port to use dictionary you downloaded one, and so we just need
choose what kind like for us... I think :)

--

[Mark Levison]

On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 11:51 PM, Andrey Ekaterenchuk <are...@gmail.com> wrote:

I agree with last 3 messages and i think that would be nice use one of
freeware dictionary in MLO optionaly :) In that case Andrey can write
some port to use dictionary you downloaded one, and so we just need
choose what kind like for us... I think :)

But even if you do that it still adds another dictionary that you have to maintain on your computer.

Cheers
Mark

[Andrey Ekaterenchuk]

just a fantasy: simple put dictionary file in subdirectory of MLO
(with name like "spell") it's useful for removable drive and clear
install/setup process...
P.S. It's now very nice to see what Andrey
thinking about :)

--

[imajeff]

Thanks yall,
I see the problem with "incorrect corrections". I think my coworker
might not see an improvement in efficiency, because of issues like
that, especially if he can't easily tell witch of the suggestions is
what he really wanted :-/

On May 12, 4:18 pm, "Steve Wynn" <steve.w...@startupcomputer.com>
wrote: