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From: steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Mac Write II comments
Message-ID: <23744@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 28 Apr 89 20:42:07 GMT
References: <29946@sri-unix.SRI.COM> <1670@pbhyg.PacBell.COM>
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In article <1670@pbhyg.PacBell.COM> mwan@PacBell.COM (Miu Wang) writes:
#>
#>A major sore point for me: Claris should provide a way to merge user spelling
#>dictionaries (for example, the old one from MacWrite 5.0) into the new format
#>User Dictionary.  Also, there should be a way to do mass edits (split, merge,
#>copy, etc) of the User Dictionary.
#>
#>                                                  Miu Wang	415-867-6476

Admittedly, I haven't used all the spelling checkers available on
the Mac or even the latest versions of some. But I haven't been
impressed with the features of any I've seen as compared with
one I once bought for less than $50 for a Z-80 CP/M machine.
Somebody could probably make a bundle writing such a product.
The features I'd like (some but not all are available in some
programs I've used) include:

Speed: Nobody wants to wait around while the speller is doing
  its thing.
Context Display: seeing the word in its context.
Easy lookup for suggested replacement: (i.e., not just one
  choice but several words in the immediate vicinity)
Ease in adding word to main dictionary: Yes, it used to be
  fairly easy to add to the main dictionary rather than
  creating alternate dictionaries.
Ability to mark words found by speller to locate them
  in an editor: sometimes faster.
Ability to back up: Sometimes you change your mind on how to
spell something, such as a transliterated name (Qaddafi, Kadaffi,
Qadhafi--intifada, intifadah) or a word with more than one correct
spelling (modeling, modelling).

There are probably some more useful features I'm not recalling
right now.

My CP/M program had all the above. An additional nice feature,
which is now available only in grammar checking programs as far
as I know but would be desireable in a spell checker, would be
to also locate repeated words, such as "the the," which is more
of a typo than a grammatical error.

Now put all this into a desk accessory, make it dirt-cheap,
and you'll have something.

Steve Goldfield