Subject: Re: Commit: A boat load of things
From: Sam TH (sam@uchicago.edu)
Date: Tue Mar 06 2001 - 18:10:56 CST
On Tue, Mar 06, 2001 at 06:11:37PM -0500, John L. Clark wrote:
>
> You note that Ignores would persist across sessions, and it's true that
> that is cool, but I question whether it's needed. Doesn't Word have an
> "Add to Dictionary" feature which is meant to augment dictionaries so as
> to avoid words being spell checked in the future? Should we investigate
> this route, instead? It seems to me to make more logical sense in the
> context of what the intent is in ignoring a spelling error.
Well, we do already have the add feature. :-)
As I see it, there are three actions, each with a number of possible
semantics:
1. Ignore
-------------
This could do any one of the following
(a) Ignore that instance of the word once. The next time you run spell
check, it asks you about this again. This has potentially complex
interaction with sqiggly underlining. The best option for this, in my
opinion, is to un-underline it when ignore is selected, and never
reunderline it (unless the word is re-edited).
(b) Ignore that instance of the word permanently. This could be saved
in the file, as Bill suggested.
(c) Ignore all instances of that word once. This option seems entirely
pointless, and is used in no other software I know of.
(d) Ignore all instances of that word permanently. This is slightly
better than (c), but is also used in no other software I can think of,
and would obviate the need for Ignore all.
Currently, we do (a). However, we don't remove the squiggly
underlining when Ignore is selected. We do remove the squiggly
underline when Ignore All is selected.
2. Ignore All
--------------
This could do any one of (c) or (d) from above. I believe that (d) is
the one used by more other word processors. I don't think that users
would expect behavior (c), and I can't think of a reason to do it
rather than (d). (d) is also what we currently do.
3. Add
-------------
This basically has two options.
(a) Add the word, so that it is never marked as misspelled again.
This is sort of like a global Ignore All. This is what we currently
do, by adding it to a per-user dictionary.
(b) Add a word, so it is just like any other word in the dictionary.
Then, if you misspell it, you get it as a choice in the dialog or
context menu. I don't know if any other word processors do this, but
I think MS Word does.
I can't think of any reason why someone would want (a) rather than
(b). However, given the way ispell works, I think (b) would be hard
to implement. Pspell may make this easier, but I don't know.
I'd like more info on what other word processors do for all three of
these options. Also, how hard will improving our implementation of
Add be?
Sam, who wishes he was more like Paul :-)
sam th
sam@uchicago.edu
http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
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