Spell check jEdit plugin

Table of Contents

Spell Check jEdit Plugin

Features

• An jEdit action to spell check selected text
• Configurable location of Aspell executable
• Spell check dialog to allow the user to validate each suspect word. The dialog has buttons for: Cancel, Change, Change All, Ignore, and Ignore All. It shows the suspect word, lists suggested replacements, and has a field where the user can type in the replacement word.

System Requirements

• Tested with jEdit 3.0.2 and jEdit 3.1pre5.
• The plugin requires Java JDK 1.3--for no real reason (bummer).
• Tested on Windows 2000, Linux (with 2.2.14 kernel)
• Aspell .32.6 alpha or better (I am using Aspell .33.5 alpha)

Installation and Configuration

• Download and install aspell-.33.5-win32-i386.zip for Windows. If you are running some flavour of Unix, you can get the source as well as some binarys from Aspell.
• Copy the the SpellPlugin.jar file to your jEdit jars directory.
• Restart jEdit. You should see a Spell Check option on the Help menu.
• In the Utilities/Global Options.../Plugin Options/Spell Check option dialog set the Aspell executable filename to where installed it.

Usage

• Select the text you would like to spell check
• Choose the menu item Plugins/Spell check selection...
• The Aspell subprocess will start showing a DOS console (anybody knows how to hide this on Windows?)
• You will be prompted with a MS-Office-like spell check dialog box for each word that needs to be validated.
• Below is more info on the dialog box.

Spell Check Dialog Box

For each misspelled word the user has buttons to choose to:

Add (not in this version)

Adds the word not in the Not in Dictionary field to the dictionary.

Cancel

Closes the dialog box without making any changes you have made.

Change

Replaces the word not in the Not in Dictionary text field with the word in the Change to text field. If the Change to text field is empty, the button name changes to Delete. To remove the selected word from the item, click Delete.

Change All

Replaces all instances of the word not in the Not in Dictionary text field with the word in the Change to text field. If the Change to text field is empty, the button name changes to Delete. To remove all instances of the selected word from the item, click Delete.

Ignore

Leaves the word not in the Not in Dictionary text field unchanged.

Ignore All

Leaves all instances of the word not in the Not in Dictionary text field unchanged.

The dialog has the following components:

Not in Dictionary:

Displays a possible error, such as a misspelled word, a duplicate word, or a incorrect capitalization.

Change to:

Displays a suggested word to replace the word that appears in the Not in Dictionary text field. To accept the suggested replacement, click Change. To delete the word in the Not in Dictionary text field, delete the text in the Change to text field, and then click Delete.

Suggestions:

Lists suggested replacement words.

Building

I do the build using Ant. Look in the build.cmd file for the version of Ant used. To see the build targets, type build -projecthelp. The most important target is make.jar.spellPlugin which creates the SpellPlugin.jar. There are other targets, but the build.xml is still a bit full of crap.

Mike Dillon contributed a makefile.jmk makefile, which should work, but I have not used, but should make some people happy.

Current Bugs

• When a selection is spell checked, if its last line is only a newline, then it is removed.
• The Aspell subprocess creates a visible console window on Windows 95/98/NT/2000. The console window is a long-standing Java bug.. Sun encountered problems under Windows 95 and 98 when the JVM ran system calls in a hidden window, which are still there under Windows NT/2000.
  If you kill the visible console window, when you next spell check you will get an error. If you spell check again, it should work as the subprocess is recreated.
• The current buffer is changed even if there were no errors corrected in the buffer.

Current Todo List

• Add words to an user dictionary
• Allow the user to reset Ignore All and Change All options (currently these are result only if jEdit is restarted)
• Undo a change
• Allow the user access to Aspell options
• Complete tool tips on the Validation dialog
• Use the EditBus to report spelling errors (so they can be underlined like Word does)
• Highlight the context of the word being corrected

Change Log

Release 002 (Apr 22, 2001)

• Added build files (build.xml and makefile.jmk) to distribution
• Updated help.html with test feedback and system requirements
• The ValidationDialog now remembers its last placement. This mean that once you move it out-of-the-way, it stays out-of-the-way.

Release 001 (Apr 16, 2001)

• First release.