Re: spell checker

[pjd editor@xxxxxxxx]

At 08:03 AM 10/04/00 -0700,from Morris Krok
>
>Adding words to the built in spell checker is very simple something that I
>only realized after sending the e - mail. Add the words that you do not wish
>to be flagged to your personal dictionary which was must be loaded,
>preferably in the startup.int file to be effective. Consequently it will
>recognize both the USA and British spellings.
>


I have a related problem living in Canada as -- depending on the audience --
it is necessary sometimes to use one or the other (colour or color e.g.)
The problem is that adding the alternate spelling to the personal dictionary
means that BOTH are shown as correct, and inconsistencies within an original
document (which I sometimes do since I grew up in the U.S.) are not flagged.
----------
Solution 1:
----------
    use the personal dictionary to flag properly spelled words
    using the special XyWrite flag "?"

    e.g.
;SP;
color ?
colour ?

    this means that BOTH are shown as incorrect and I can make a decision
    at the time

----------
Solution 2:
----------
    create two add-on spelling dictionaries, one with British, one with
    U.S. spelling, using the standard method
   
e.g.
(British)
color  colour

(US)
colour color

    load the proper one as needed. In editing, my view is that consistency
    is more important that which spelling is used. Some Canadians get
    snooty about British spelling, but in fact the Canadian Government
    style book showed the preferred spelling as American ("color" etc)
    until about 1970, when people here decided Canada as a nation on
    its own.

----------
Solution 3
----------
    use the correct command -- running the spellcheck program
    on a file and creating an error file which you then scan and
    correct as needed.
   
    This last method is probably the best for long documents as it
    is faster and allows you to adjust as needed. In that case, I
    would probably use solution 1 (above) so that all the words
    would be flagged either way.


Incidentally, I have found two other great uses for the Spellchecker
used as in option 3: You can set up one or a series of search and
replace actions across as many files as you want by creating the
mispelled word file first and then proceeding with the "correct"
command. I have more often used the other: to create a list of words as
a mispelled word file, and use the file to automatically create index
references in your documents. Again, this is a powerful tool when handling
a book where you don't want to stop while you are hot in the writing
to add index marks.

regards
-pjd