Best Free Spell-Checker
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In a Hurry?
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Introduction
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A typo is a common mistake in the typing process due to slips of fingers. To help reduce the mistakes, users can install a good spell checker which helps check typos almost completely in a few seconds, and suggest a list of correct words for replacement right on the screen. Quite often the spell checker picks up the mistakes more reliably than the human's eyes do. |
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Discussion
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It has one odd feature -- the dictionary has both American and English spelling so words like "color" and "colour" both show as correct. Overall, it's quite a solid and excellent product. tinySpell features include:
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Other freeware to be reviewed: |
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Related Products and Links
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You might want to check out these articles too: |
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Editor
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This software category is maintained by volunteer editor Nikita |
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Tags
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speller, spell check, spelling check, free spell check, freeware |
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I think tinySpell is great, but one word of caution - when you hover the mouse over the icon at the bottom right of the screen, tinySpell will reveal the last thing you typed in, even if that was a password! So someone else who uses your computer can have access to sensitive information. So I disabled it in certain applications and keep the icon hidden. But after seeing what tinySpell, SIW and PC Wizard can reveal, I now keep others in my family (or outside the family) from using my computer at all. Oh, there may be other spell checkers (and misc apps) that act similarly.
This is good. I have been using the SpellBound Firefox add-on for years and couldn't be happier with it. Can be found here: http://jundle.com/spellbound_details/
Just my 2cents... but you'll love.
The amazing little freeware TinySpell, when teamed-up with Lingoes (see my comment on the "Best Free Dictionary/Thesaurus Utility" page on this site) is a KILLER combination.
Trust me on this. Everything just has to be set up right.
__________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
gregg [at] greggdeselms.com
Napa, California
The 'odd' feature of allowing US and British spelling isn't odd if you live in the EU.
I agree. That sounds like a good feature, why is it odd?
Because one generally needs to check US, British and other spellings separately. As with Word.
Thu, 06/19/2008 - 02:14 — Johnboy
I just got EditPadLite 6.4.1 dated 12 March 2008. and tinySpell 1.7 a few minutes later.
Can you tell me how to use it with EditPadLite?
I'm Disabled
Johnboy,
Once you install tinyspell it will start checking your spelling as you type. A small yellow box will appear near any word that is misspelled with the word that tinyspell thinks is in error (I think you also get a beep, but I can't remember exactly how tinyspell arrives when it comes out of the box). If you click on the little yellow box, tinyspell will give you suggestions to correct your spelling. To test, I just downloaded and installed EditPadLite, downloaded and installed tinySpell. I then invoked both from the shortcuts that were dropped on my desktop as a side-effect of the install process and confirmed that both appeared in my toolbar. At that point, I started typing into EditPadLite and tinyspell threw up its little boxes as I typed errors. I hope that helps!
GNU Aspell is definitely worth a serious look - http://aspell.net/win32/
It has *many* languages available, and is available for Unix, Linux, Windows and more. It is the standard spell checker on Linux, and many Unix systems, and is very good, and fast. Unfortunately I don't think that there is a nice convenient Windows GUI where you can just drag or paste some text for checking, but many apps (Opera comes to mind, and some text editors) support spell checking via DLL calls to Aspell. What you can do, if your file is plain text, is to drag it and drop it onto a shortcut (created at installation time) which simply invokes the aspell.exe file with the single parameter "check". This works well, but opens up a DOS style window with plain text. All spell checking/replacement options are available, but no easy way to change a word in place.
Somebody listed a demo Windows GUI on the aspell.net home page - http://aspell.net/gui.txt, I have not taken a look at it. Since I'm busy learning Python right now, maybe a GUI spell checker interface that calls Aspell would be a good starting project for me to get some experience on.
Maybe Gizmo ... maybe! :-)
ASpell is nice, but the windows port of the software (and dictionary) has not been updated since 2002 and unless some resource volunteers to update and maintain it, probably will not be.
I'd look at the opensource alternative hunspell. http://hunspell.sourceforge.net/
cheers
It would be nice to know about other options, offering support in various languages such as French, Spanish, German.
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