MicroSpell Release History

Changes From Beta 1 to Beta 2

• Added bookmarks. These are useful when you need to edit your document while you are spell checking it. MicroSpell does not allow you to arbitrarily edit your document while the Inbox is open; if you try, it will now offer to bookmark the location and automatically return you to the same position after you close the Inbox.
• Added self-closing message boxes. These are used to give feedback without requiring you to close a dialog. By default, they self-close after 2 seconds; you can change the timeout or set it to zero to suppress the boxes. The same information appears on the status line, so you don't have to worry about missing something.
• Changed how Hotkey spell checks that find no misspellings are handled. The speller displays "No Misspellings" in a self-closing message box for nearly a second, then automatically returns the text to the source.
• Changed Inbox and Outbox title bar text, and reworded some message boxes.
• Added Tutorial text in HTML format so you can more easily read the tutorial (in your browser) while working on the Tutorial text in the speller.
• Changed the default window positions.
• Changed the default settings for non-letter characters that are allowed within words.
• The list box in the Document List dialog is no longer disabled during spell checking.
• Added Window|Keep MicroSpell on Top command.

Changes From Beta 2 to Beta 3x

• Added "Unchecked File Count" indicator to main window status bar; added tool tips for all status bar panes.
• Added a "Tip of the Day" function.
• Hotkey spell checking can now transfer text back to the original window even if that window has been minimized.
• Modified text on Inbox "Close..." button; now called the "Done" button.
• Added Window|Layout commands to make it easier to arrange the speller's windows on your screen.
• Changed how the "spell check" toolbar button works. The button now remains active and "pushed in" while the Inbox is open to indicate that a spell check is in progress. If you click this button while the Inbox is open, it will close, just as if you had pressed or the standard Windows close button.
• Changed hotkey spell checking scripts for the edit and rich edit controls so they automatically copy and check all of the text.
• If MicroSpell was minimized before a hotkey spell check, it will now be returned to the same state. If the speller does not find any suspects during a hotkey spell check, it will not bring its main window to the foreground; instead, it shows "No Misspellings" in a small self-closing dialog. You can change things (Options|General Preferences|Miscellaneous) so that it plays a sound (NoMsp.wav in the speller's \DATA directory) instead or in addition.
• The path setting in the File|Open dialog is now persistent.
• The speller no longer modifies case of TeX file extensions when searching for "\include" files. Warning sound has been disabled for "\include" failures.
• Added a drop down menu to the Inbox "Accept All" button which gives you the option to copy all accepted words to the DSD or LSD.
• Added two more "Save To" buttons to the Inbox. Added drop down menus to "Save To" buttons to allow easier setting of the save destination. Removed the "Set Save Loc." button from the Dictionaries dialog.
• Modified script recording in hotkey spell checking to always use <F12> to start and stop recording, regardless of the current hotkey setting.
• Added tool tips for nearly all Replace/Lookup dialog controls. Added a pop-up menu command to disable tool tips for button controls.
• Revised the documentation. Added "How-To" topic, removed tutorial.
• Modified function which adds TeX "\include" files to document file list to make the "include" commands user definable.
• If a spell check is already in progress when you request a hotkey spell check, MicroSpell now gives you the option of abandoning your current work.
• Added General Preferences option "Do not automatically close empty Inbox if all suspects auto-accepted" to let you choose whether or not the speller automatically closes the Inbox if it is empty because all of the suspects were auto-accepted.
• Made the background color of self-closing dialog (message) boxes user definable. You can change it using Options|Set Colors|Main Window.
• When you save words to a closed user dictionary, the speller no longer leaves the dictionary open.
• Fixed problem with default button in Replace dialog. (Pressing <Enter> did nothing when certain buttons had focus.)
• Fixed bug that caused speller to ignore the system tray when arranging windows.
• Fixed problem that prevented the speller from starting up minimized.
• Modified the Inbox and Outbox pop-up menu "Save" commands to allow removal as well.
• MicroSpell can now detect words (sentences) that end with a double period.
• Added the capability to suppress spell checking within certain TeX environments. Everything between \begin{environment-name} and the corresponding \end{environment-name} will be ignored for each "environment-name" that appears in a user-defined list. You can edit this list on the Options|TeX Preferences|Miscellaneous dialog or use any text editor to modify the file "TeXBeginEndSkip.dat" located in the speller's "\DATA" directory. The list should contain one item per line; it need not be sorted.
• Added the capability to suppress spell checking the arguments of certain TeX commands. By default, MicroSpell ignores TeX commands but spell checks all arguments. If you add a command to a user-defined list (on the Options|TeX Preferences|Miscellaneous dialog), the speller will ignore all arguments enclosed in square brackets plus a single argument enclosed in curly brackets following that command, by default. To have the speller ignore additional arguments, append a number of curly bracket pairs ({}) corresponding to the maximum number of arguments to be ignored. This list is stored in the file "TeXArgSkip.dat" which you can edit directly if you prefer. The list should contain one item per line; it need not be sorted.
• Added the following predefined TeX "skip blocks": \[ ... \], \( ... \), \def, \edef, \gdef, \xdef.
• In TeX mode, you can now elect to have MicroSpell translate (or not) accented characters in replacement words to TeX multi-character accents.
• Made path persistent in common file open dialogs used for adding dictionaries and for browsing while editing user dictionaries.
• Fixed HTML-related bug that caused speller to skip some commands even when command skipping was off. Modified speller to check "alt=" text within commands, even when commands are being skipped. Modified the code that includes linked documents to exclude anything that does not have ".htm" or ".html" as the extension.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Dictionaries Dialog to appear at the same time the main window was minimized (when the speller was started after having been closed while minimized).

Changes From Beta 3x to Beta 4x

• You can now set Inbox and Outbox fonts without closing the box. (An unresolved issue: occasionally when you change a font, the box redraws so the first line is partially obscured by the sort header. This is a one-time problem; it works fine subsequently.)
• Changed how clicking on an inactive Inbox or Outbox affects the target. Previously, the box would be activated, but the mouse click would always be ignored. Now the mouse click is ignored only if more than one item is selected. This makes the speller generally more responsive while preserving multiple selections. Also fixed a bug that caused mouse clicks to be ignored after an Inbox or Outbox button was pressed and not released until the mouse cursor was no longer over the button.
• Added ";" to the set of characters that are legal in the main dictionary.
• Added an optional "Learn Remaining Words?" dialog that appears after you press the Inbox done button if there are words remaining in the Inbox, or words that you've accepted in the Outbox. This offers a convenient way to save everything in a Document or Location Specific Dictionary so the words will not reappear as suspects the next time you check the document. If the Document List contains more than one entry located in the same directory as the current file, the LSD save button becomes the default; otherwise, it's the DSD. By default, this dialog does not appear following hotkey spell checks.
• The "Bookmarks" dialog now automatically appears if you have set more than one bookmark while spell checking your document. (The speller automatically scrolls to the first one, so there is no need for the dialog unless you have set more than one.)
• In earlier versions, the speller automatically scrolled the currently selected line to the center of the Inbox when you gave a command that removed a selected line at the top or bottom. This version does not scroll automatically under these conditions.
• The "up-arrow", "PgUp", "down-arrow", and "PgDn" keys now work differently in the Inbox and Outbox whenever more than one line is selected. Previously, they would de-select all but one line before moving; now they preserve the selection and simply scroll the list.
• Added a "Select and Group Related Suspects" dialog which makes it significantly easier to deal with a large number of suspects. It shows which of the Inbox grouping commands will be most productive (by showing how many items will be affected) and provides buttons to invoke any of them. The dialog is displayed automatically when there are more than a preset number of suspects.
• Modified layout commands so they automatically resize the main window if necessary instead of asking you to do it.
• When you check a TeX document that "includes" others, or an HTML document with local links to others, the speller now shows a dialog that enables you to choose whether to spell check the additional documents. This is handy if you often switch between checking and not checking linked documents, if you forget about (or never knew about) this feature, or if you don't use TeX or HTML modes often enough to remember how to change the settings. If you don't want to see these dialogs, you can easily suppress them and change the settings using the appropriate mode-specific preferences dialogs.
• Whenever you give an "Undo" command with an unsorted Inbox, the suspects are placed before the current selection instead of at the beginning of the list. This keeps you from losing your place when you give a command and immediately undo it.
• Modified the guessing function to construct alternatives for suspects that end with 's. If the appropriate replacement is not in MicroSpell's dictionary (which is usually the case), the guess is created algorithmically. (The tool tips on the guesses reveal the origin if you want to know.)
• The "Replace" commands now move the selection to the next suspect word in the document after they finish. This makes their behavior consistent with the "Accept" and "Allow Once" commands.
• Disabled the automatic addition of word fragments to the Accept All list when a suspect is auto-accepted. This reduces the chances that a misspelling will be accepted via one of the auto-accept functions. You can now manually save fragments to any user dictionary; see next item. You can also restore the old behavior if you prefer. See "Why Do I Get Fewer Suspects When I Close the Inbox and Recheck?" in the "Tips and Techniques" help topic.
• The Dictionaries dialog now includes a "Split" checkbox which, when checked, causes the speller to split dragged-and-dropped or cut-and-pasted words containing non-letters into multiple fragments. The original suspect and each of the fragments are saved separately.
• Reordered the Inbox category icons so that the categories which are more likely to contain errors appear first.
• Added Web-based dictionary lookup capability. To look up the spelling or definition of any word, highlight it and press <Ctrl-W> (for Web or Webster's). MicroSpell will forward your request to one of the web sites for which it has a predefined URL. You will see the search results in your browser. If the first site does not have the appropriate information, press <Ctrl-W> again and the speller will try the next site on its list. When you look up a different word, it tries the most recent site first.
• Added the Web Lookup command to many of the speller's pop-up menus. Using the menus, you can direct the search to any of the predefined sites, not just the default site. There is now a dialog (Options|General Preferences|Web Lookup) for adding, editing, or deleting web lookup sites.
• Changed the "file modified" indicator in the main edit window title bar from a "*" to "(modified)".
• Fixed a bug that allowed "misspelled" numbers such as "333th" (instead of 333rd) to be ignored when the speller option "Don't show numbers as suspects" was enabled.
• Changed the position of the "repeated word" category when the Inbox is sorted by category. The new position (at or near the top) makes them harder to miss.

Changes From Beta 4x to Beta 5x

• The documentation is nearly complete.
• Added an option to the Inbox pop-up menu (Show|Compound and Prefix-Base-Suffix Divisions in Context) which enables you to have the suspect word, as displayed in the context column, divided using a dot to show prefix-base-suffix and compound word separations, e.g. "untrusted" would be shown as "un·trusted."
• Added an option to the Inbox pop-up menu (Show|Best Guess Next to Suspect in Context) which displays the speller's best guess next to the suspect word in the context column. The guess is drawn using the normal "guess" color so it stands out from the rest of the context. This option makes corrections easier if you often look at the suspect in context before correcting it.
• By default, the speller now automatically updates the main window text colors while you are working in the Inbox, regardless of whether there's a selection in the main edit window. If you are working on a slow machine, you might find these updates distracting; if so, you can have MicroSpell update the colors only when the text selection disappears. To do this, enable the "Stop text coloring while Inbox open and text selected" checkbox on the Options|General Preferences|Miscellaneous dialog.
• Changed the keyboard shortcuts for two of the Inbox "Save To" buttons from "F5" and "F6" to "F8" and "F9". This makes it less likely that you will press "F4" (which closes the Inbox) by mistake.
• A new Inbox pop-up menu command "Show|Guesses Indented and Aligned Vertically (new setting)" enables you to change the indentation and alignment of the guesses within the Suspect column. This might make it easier to visually scan the suspect list. If not, you can also restore the old behavior using this command. Invoke the pop-up menu by Right-clicking in the Suspect column where you want the guess "column" to appear. You can then give this command and the Inbox will be redrawn to show the new setting while the speller prompts you to either accept the new setting or restore the old.
• Fixed a bug that caused a stack overflow if you attempted to copy a large amount of text to the Clipboard from MicroSpell's main edit window, or from the Dictionary Edit Dialog.
• The speller now logs status messages for the current session. You can view the log anytime by double-clicking on the status bar where the messages appear or by using the "Status Message Log" command on the View menu. If you are trying to reproduce a problem (or report it), a copy of the log might be quite helpful. You might also want to consult the log if you miss a self-closing dialog message, or if you want to review changes you made to earlier documents.
• The Inbox and Outbox now automatically scroll the document to track the currently selected suspect whenever there's exactly one suspect selected. If multiple suspects are selected in the Inbox or Outbox, the selection is preserved and the list simply scrolls; the document does not track the scroll. You can scroll the list without changing the selection when a single suspect is selected by using <Ctrl> in combination with a numeric keypad movement key.
• Simplified the way the Inbox "Replace" buttons work. Added a third "Replace" button so each button performs a fixed task rather the old behavior where two tasks shared a single button. Removed the "View Grouped/All" button. This function is now available on the pop-up menu ("Show" submenu), and the keyboard shortcut "V" still works.
• Changed some Inbox keyboard shortcuts and added some new ones. Here are some of the most important changes: the <space> key no longer runs the Accept All command; instead, it does a Page Down. (Accept All is not used as frequently as in the past, whereas moving by page is very common.) For Accept All, use "I", "A", or "Ins" (new). The "Enter" key now replaces with the currently selected guess. You can select guesses using the arrow keys, the "G" key, or (as before) by number ("1","2", or "3") for immediate replacement. You no longer have to go to the Outbox to undo the selected items; from the Inbox, you can press "Ctrl-Z" or "Alt-U" (provided the Outbox is open). The Inbox "Help" button now has a drop-down menu that lists the most useful keyboard shortcuts; this menu also has a submenu containing mouse shortcuts.
• To reduce the number of suspects, MicroSpell will sometimes consider a "compound word" formed by joining two or more fragments with hyphens or underscores (e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) to be a sequence of simple words (e.g. HKEY, LOCAL, MACHINE). The resulting suspect would be "HKEY" rather than "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" even though you have MicroSpell's options set to allow underscores within words. It will break up compound words only when they contain a least one underscore or hyphen, and when all fragments except one are recognizable words.
• To reduce the number of repeated-word "false alarms," the speller now considers a tab character or eight or more spaces between identical copies of the same word to be evidence that you intended the repetition and does not report this as a possible repeated word error.
• Fixed "Send To" bug.
• The function that enables you to check linked HTML files now recognizes files having the ".shtml" extension.
• Added an icon for the "Web Lookup" command to the main window toolbar.
• The speller no longer attempts to check (or asks whether to check) linked HTML files during a hotkey spell check. Similarly, linked TeX files are also ignored when you are hotkey spell checking a TeX file.
• Added "Check Linked HTML Files" and "Check 'included' TeX Files" options to File menu. These options are easier to view and change than their counterparts on the HTML and TeX mode preferences dialogs.
• Added "Spell Check Text in Another Window" command to File menu. This command displays instructions for hotkey spell checking, and the currently defined hotkey.
• When you edit the Web Lookup options (on the General Preferences dialog), the default lookup location is now set to the first item on the list when you save your changes. This behavior is consistent with what happens when you start MicroSpell.
• MicroSpell now installs an additional spell check icon that lets you conveniently spell check the contents of the Clipboard. The installation program will also offer to place the same icon on your start menu for easy access. Clipboard checking works like normal spell checking except that the text is read form and saved to the Clipboard instead of a file.
• You can now use MicroSpell more easily from within NT Emacs. Use Help|Search and search for "emacs" for more details.
• Added a search function to the online help. Use Help|Search and search for "Searching Online Help" for more information.
• Modified the "Zap" command (File|Zap) to remove the "zapped" file from the Document List.
• Fixed a bug in the "Remove" command of the Dictionary View/Edit Dialog. If the edit buffer contained more that one copy of a particular word, the Remove command previously removed only one of them. It now removes all of them.
• The speller is now better at recognizing and setting HTML mode automatically. In HTML mode, the speller can now check text contained within certain <meta>, <input> and <table> tags in addition to "alt" text. For more information, search for "meta input table" using Help|Search.
• Fixed a bug in Help Search function that prevented certain "match similar" searches from finding any matches.
• You can now display more guesses than are shown in the Inbox by clicking on the ellipsis (...) that follows the guess list when more than three guesses are available. This is a mouse shortcut that displays the Replace/Lookup dialog.
• Fixed a file handling bug that prevented the speller from automatically opening the next unchecked file under certain conditions.
• While closing the Inbox, if you save the remaining Inbox suspects and Outbox accepted words in a document-specific or location-specific dictionary, MicroSpell now lists the saved words in the status log. This makes it possible for you to remove the saved words if you added them unintentionally.
• MicroSpell now includes better support for the Epsilon programmer's editor. Use Help|Search and search for "epsilon" for more details.
• The "Add Files to Document List" dialog now maintains a history of the ten most recent directories you have visited so you can easily return to any of them. This is useful if you often check files in the same (small set of) locations.
• Fixed a bug that could affect the coloring of known word fragments in the Inbox when the suspect contains accented characters.
• If your system contains version 2 of Microsoft's rich edit control, MicroSpell will now automatically use it in the Dictionary View/Edit dialog to ensure that you can edit word lists significantly longer than what previous versions allowed. Search for "rich edit 2" for more discussion.
• When specifying User Defined Skip Blocks (Options | Mode Preferences | Scan Options), you can now use "\n" to represent the end of the current line.
• MicroSpell can now import Ispell dictionary word lists. For more information, search for "import Ispell".
• In order to reduce visual clutter in the Inbox and alert you that the sort mode has changed, the normal category icons are replaced by plain grey squares whenever the suspects are not sorted by category icon. However, to keep you from missing potential problems, the "repeated word" and "known misspelling" icons are never replaced.
• Made some changes in the documentation and added demo text to the Welcome text file.
• Enabled additional fonts in the Set Font dialogs.
• Added a persistent heavy line at the end of a group of selected Inbox suspects when they have been selected by MicroSpell's grouping commands. This marks the end of the group even if you have to collapse the selection to make a correction.
• Added a Spell Check dialog which enables you to check your documents one-word-at-a-time as in most other spell checkers. The Inbox is still available and you can choose which interface you prefer, or switch between them at any time. The Inbox "Allow Once" button has been replaced by the "Check One-at-a-Time" button which switches to the Spell Check dialog. The Allow Once command is still available via the <O> keyboard shortcut.
• Modified the hotkey spell checking function so that it attempts to close any open dialog boxes and proceed with the spell check. In earlier versions, a open dialog halted a hotkey spell check.
• Added the capability of saving to a file in the Learn Mode dialog. This is useful if you are "learning" many new words because the user dictionaries (which are the other possible save destinations) cannot hold more than about 32,000 words.
• Fixed a bug that occasionally prevented the Spell Check dialog from auto-accepting certain newly recognized words. This did not cause any harm, but made you look at suspects (colored all black) that were (newly) known.
• Fixed a bug that, in rare circumstances, caused the Hotkey spell checking function to return all but the last character of the corrected text to the source window.
• The speller no longer colors interior fragments of unrecognized words unless it can color at least 7 characters. Also, it no longer shows capitalized words colored as possible compound or run-together words if the word contains fewer than eight letters. This reduces the amount of irrelevant coloring.
• The speller now automatically issues the "Accept All - Newly Recognized" command whenever you open a dictionary while the Inbox is open.
• Added "Save to DSD" and "Save to LSD" buttons to the statistics dialog that appears after you have dealt with the final suspect in the Spell Check dialog.
• Added two new dictionaries: Main-more.lex and Names-places.lex. The first contains many less frequently used words and British spellings. The second contains many proper nouns.
• Modified the speller so that it includes the terminal period in the suspect whenever the suspect contains at least one other period and matches other "abbreviation-like" criteria.
• Fixed a bug that caused Replace Dialog to be shown in response to a single click near the beginning of the suspect in the Inbox.
• Added a new General Preferences > Spell Checking > Miscellaneous option: Accept suspects like "re-write" even if dictionary contains "rewrite".
• Added a "Find Files" command to the "File" menu. This command runs the Windows file find utility which is useful when you know the name but not the location of the file(s) you want to check. You can drag-and-drop or cut-and-paste the files into the speller's main window to check them.
• Fixed a TeX mode bug that prevented the speller from including multi-character accent codes within suspects in some instances. Fixed a dictionary handling bug that caused the speller to sometimes ignore the "Accept All" list when all of the main dictionaries were closed and reopened in a different order.
• Fixed a bug which caused the speller to sometimes ask unnecessarily whether you want to check "included" TeX or linked HTML documents.
• Modified the Epsilon eel and Emacs elisp code for integrating the speller. In both cases, point is saved and restored to its (at least, approximate) original position. The Epsilon code for "spell-buffer" now calls "spell-file" if there is an associated filename. (With the original code, Epsilon could automatically reload the original text, removing any corrections.)