Can't spell check

[Jeff Epstein]

I have a text document and can't figure out how to spell check it. I have nothing selected, select Tools-->Spelling, and it immediately says "The spelling check is complete. 0 words were changed."

This happens even if I run spelling check after (1) select all the text, or even (2) just select a single word that is *blatantly* mispelled.

I've looked in the help documentation to see why the spelling check might not check a single document, but don't see anything relevant.

Can anybody help me? Thanks.

[Andreas]

Jeff, check your settings for the document class of the file you try to do this.
Go to Configure/Preferences, Open Document Class branch of the tree and click on the name of the document class.
In the option tree on the right hand side, check the appropriate boxes under "Check spelling of" and try spell-checking again.

Andreas

[Jeff Epstein]

Thanks for the tip, I never knew that was there.

However, this still didn't fix my problem. I check *all* the three sub-options, under "Check spelling of" under the "Default" document class (which affects all), and it still doesn't check it.

Again, I didn't select anything, didn't work. Selected all, didn't work. Selected a blatantly mispelled word, didn't work.

:' (

[robbage]

Which dictionaries have you got installed?

Maybe try switching from American to English if you have both installed.(that should increase the chances of finding spelling mistakes anyway

[Jeff Epstein]

I only have the American dictionary, but as I was attempting your suggestion, I noticed something:

The document is currently my_document.txt, which is the "Text Document" document class. I currently have *.txt, *.sql and *.bat under this. All the checkboxes under the "Check spelling of" preference are checked in this document class, too.

I also have a "Cold Fusion" document class. "*.cfm". It also has all the spelling checkboxes checked.

When I save my current document as my_document.cfm, the spell check works as normal. But saving it with ANY of the Text Document extensions (txt, sql, bat), the spell check does not happen.

Things that make you go "hmmmmm..."

[moderator]

Do you have syntax highlighting selected for this document class?
Spelling is checked for the entire document, unless you select the text to be checked first. When syntax highlighting is enabled, only comments, strings and plain text are spell checked. Checking of comments and strings can be individually enabled for each document class on the document class pages of the Properties dialog box.

Heidi-Marie

[mkaufman]

I too noticed that syntax highlighting disables spell checking outside of comments and quotes. I use TextPad to take notes at meetings, conferences, etc. and have created a syntax file that automatically highlights things that are important to me - people's names, projects, etc.

It all works quite well, but I cannot spell check the document if the highlighting is on. Is there anyway to modify this coupling in TextPad?

-Matt

[helios]

If you need to spell check a document that consists of plain text only, then
you don't need to have syntax highlighting enabled. However, if you want to spell check an HTML document, for example, then TextPad will only spell check plain text, or comments and strings. The rest of the code will not be checked.

When the Syntax highlighting is enabled, and HTML=1 in the syntax file, then the spell checker will only check plain text which is outside of the tags.

When C=1 in the syntax file, then only the spelling within Comments and Strings is checked, and then only if those options are enabled on the particular document class Properties page.


In order to spell check comments etc., you will need to check the option as in the following example:

From the Configure menu choose:

1. Preferences
2. "+" sign next to Document classes
3. Java
4. Under Document class options, enable "Check spelling of" "Comments" etc.
5. Click Apply / OK.

I hope this helps.

[clutch]

I've been using textpad also and with the same problem with jeff..but the syntax defintion file help solve the problem. In my case it is configured to list.syn, and thats why it was'nt checking the text..well anyway just want to say thanks.....

[rpovin]

I can't seem to spell check any text doc unless I disable the syntax highlighting feature for the text doc class. Yes, I have enabled spell check for all of the options in class setup for .txt. But it doesn't matter, spell check still doesn't work.

Any suggestions ?

[helios]

Please ensure that you only use the syntax file "text.syn", for the Text Document class. If you use any other, the Spellchecker won't work.

I hope this helps.

[rpovin]

OK.... I am using that syntax file. So any other suggestions ?

And now I have to ask: Must the name of every syntax file exactly match the doc class name ?

[Cloink]

Why on earth does it not explain in the help for the spell checker, the 'How to Check Spelling' page, that spell checking is disabled for syntax-highlighted documents (yes yes, except comments & strings)? I've just spent about an hour trying to make it work on a syntax-highlighted document. This forum-post started in 2001 and you haven't thought to quickly add one line to the help file to explain this in the past seven years?

So. I can't use spell checker to implement a feature that is missing, that being 'Auto-change mnemonic to full text'. For example, in Oracle pl/sql, a common statement is
> RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR( -20000, 'Error blah blah' );
and I would like to be able to make TP insert most of this automatically when I type
> rae

Can I do this at all? I already have a 'Clip Library' entry to insert this text, I would like the other option too.

[sagetyrtle]

This solution worked for me.

I have a special document class I created called .tyr, which has syntax highlighting enabled. The syntax file is called tyr.syn and I made all the changes recommended in this thread.

Spellchecking for the entire document finally works!

Thanks much.

[sagetyrtle]

Hmm. Well, it kind of works.

Here's what it does:

The word "horse" misspelled as follows:

horrse

[horrse]

<horrse>

It does *not* catch the first one, but it *does* catch the second and third.

I've implemented all the solutions above. Any ideas?