What's New in Spell Catcher X version 10.1.2

Speech Recognition

It has always been possible to use Spell Catcher's interactive checking while keeping your hands on the keyboard at all times. Keyboard shortcuts exist or can be defined for every menu command or control in the Suggest Spelling window and input (checkmark) menu. The addition of speech recognition makes Spell Catcher X's interactive features even more accessible, offering another way to "drive" interactive checking without using the mouse or using keyboard shortcuts. For those that have difficulties using the keyboard or mouse already using Mac OS X's speech recognition, Spell Catcher X is now much easier to use.

Spell Catcher X 10.1.2's Speech Recognition goes beyond a simple Speakable Items implementation. It offers a full, flexible, context-sensitive recognition model. Make corrections, change languages, ignore words, learn words, create shorthands and much more with spoken commands. If you haven't tried Speech Recognition in Mac OS X yet, and use Spell Catcher X's input method for interactive checking, you may be very pleasantly surprised at how well this can work! See the Using Speech Recognition chapter in Spell Catcher's Online Help book for more details.

Instantaneous Interactive Corrections and Shorthand Expansions (Mac OS X 10.3 and later, in applications that support it)

Spell Catcher X 10.1 added some basic support for direct access of a document's text by an input method. This technology is available on Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and later, available in most Cocoa applications and Carbon applications that use Apple's Multilingual Text Engine (MLTE). Spell Catcher X 10.1 took advantage of this functionality where possible, using the currently-selected text for certain features and commands.

Spell Catcher X 10.1.2 takes the next step, using the text replacement abilities that this technology offers. The results are dramatic - Spell Catcher no longer has to backspace over the abbreviation you just typed or any text typed after an error you want to correct! Interactive corrections and expansions are truly instantaneous. It's hard to describe the difference - you have to see it in action for yourself. Fire up a Cocoa application such as TextEdit, activate Spell Catcher's input method, make sure Interactive Checking is on. Now make some shorthand expansions and interactive corrections. Watch closely!

New Preferences

A smattering of new preferences have been added:

• Spelling pane, Checking tab.
  Words that are mixed case
  When checked, Spell Catcher will ignore words that are mixed case (defined as: (more than one alphabetic character and at least one uppercase letter and not all uppercase) and (first letter lowercase and at least one uppercase letter or capitalized word with more than one uppercase letter)).
• Interactive pane, Typing tab.
  Make replacements directly (without backspacing) where possible
  Described above in Instantaneous Interactive Corrections and Shorthand Expansions
• Interactive pane, Spelling tab.
  Always closes after making a replacement
  Even if more interactive errors are pending, the Suggest Spelling window will always close after you choose a suggestion or otherwise make a replacement.
• Hidden Preferences.
  While there is no user interface for these yet, new preferences (defaults) exist for those that require more control over the behavior of Proximity's spelling engine. If you need control of linguistic features such as word compounding, hyphenated forms, alternate accented forms, case differences, detecting of ordinals and the like, contact us and we can help you fine-tune things for your specific language and requirements.
  As well, new defaults exist to change the characters that are considered word separators, as well as the characters that should be ignored when embedded in a word.

Features, Changes and Fixes

• Added the Spelling References... command to the input (checkmark) menu, for direct access to Spell Catcher Preferences, References pane (this item is in Spell Catcher's Dock menu and in the Spell Catcher menu itself).
• Added the Use Speech Commands command to the input (checkmark) menu, to turn Spell Catcher's Speech Recognition on and off.
• If Questionable Capitalization is off (Preferences, Spelling, Checking tab), such errors are no longer considered spelling errors.
• Fewer spurious questionable spelling errors when word(s) have embedded parentheses. This is also a "hidden default" that can be adjusted - namely what characters should be skipped when constructing the actual word to be checked.
• Fewer spurious missing capital (at the beginning of a sentence) errors when the punctuation that ends a sentence is followed by additional punctuation. For example, the second instance of the word "isn't" (finally!) isn't flagged as a missing capital error in this sentence.
• More spelling suggestions are now generated when the error is a run-together word.
• Spelling suggestions in addition to a shorthand’s expansion are now generated for shorthand abbreviations in the Check Word and Check Selection window.
• Better overall compatibility (interactive checking and selection-based operations) with FirstClass client (version 7.x and later).
• Option-click the Show Duplicates checkbox (when turning it on) and all conflicting entries will be selected. Shift-Option-click and all conflicts will be selected. NOTE: A very large file can take a while to process. You can cancel with command-period.
• Updated Spell Catcher’s Online Help Book, added a new chapter describing Spell Catcher X 10.1.2’s speech recognition commands.
• Added Help Tags to the various items in Spell Catcher’s File/New submenu that give a brief explanation of the various document types.
• Added item to Spell Catcher’s Help menu to visit our FAQs and Knowledge Base.
• Fixed; The Warn if there are any Ignore All words when Quitting Spell Catcher preference (Spelling pane, Ignore All tab) was incorrectly tied to the Automatically select the first suggestion for all types of errors (Spelling pane, Suggestions tab).
• Other minor enhancements, compatibility improvements, and bug fixes.

Spell Catcher X Version History