Regular CDB readers (or new ones) know I can hardly type one paragraph without creating at least 6 typos. I am sorry, I opted out of keyboarding class in high school (spending my adult years typing was not in my road map). I cannot type and thus my spelling goes out the window.
Sure recent applications have built in spell checkers or little red line underlines for mistakes, but the fixes require more or less launching other mini apps to fix.
I recall hearing about the built in Dictionary for OS X 10.4 and how it is available for most applications. And wow, it just worked slicky on that last post! The chances of me spelling “Curmedgeon” correctly was about 15%. Up to know I will admit my first reach for a mispelled word is to toss it into Google, and wait for the
But then is two app switches plus a copy/paste or two.
Panther takes a good swipe at the habit.
I simply highlight the word in question (double click in the word boundary) here in ecto, my blog editor software:
And I just ctrl-click the word, and can in-place replace it with the correct spelling:
Now this rocks! Who knows, maybe I will finally be able to write with that polished, scholarly tone or Cambridge perfection, with an aura of elbow patches and caviar.
Don’t forget the meerschaum pipe.
Heya, Alan… Keep going down that contextual menu, until you hit “Spelling” – in there is a handy option to turn on “Check Spelling as You Type” which makes it even easier… For instance, the Tiger spellchecker system is complaining about “Heya” by adding that handy red dotted underline…
And the dictionary and thesaurus are equally as cool. For example, you can highlight a word on a web page in Safari and then use the contextual menu to look up its meaning in the dictionary.
Are we talking about Panther or Tiger, here? I think it’s Tiger… but I can spell & type (and even chew gum) at the same time, so I don’t hit the spelling too often. *grin*
Panther has it too (not the dictionary, but the built-in spellchecking in any Cocoa app). Dictionary and thesaurus are new additions for Tiger.
Ooops yes – I was talking about Tiger and I wrongly assumed Alan was too despite the obvious clue in the title. I guess I was reflecting back on Alan’s recent posts about upgrading to Tiger.
Doh, Sorry for confusing. I got my cats mixed up. Yes, I am talking about Panther