Hi Thomas
On 6 Jun 2006 at 12:49, Thomas Lange wrote:
> >> > I suppose that there could be
> >> > an option about whether to start at the current text insertion point
> >> > or the beginning of the document; personally, I'd probably want to
> >> > check the whole document once I'd finished writing it, so wouldn't
> >> > use this extra option.
> >>
> >> That is I guess you would not want to activate automatic checking and
> >> when you are finished just like to jump to the top of the document and
> >> start interactive checking there. Correct?
> >
> > On reflection, I think starting from the current cursor position is
> > OK, even for the interactive grammar checking. Or even starting from
> > the top of the currently visible page. At what point will the headers
> > and footers be checked? After reaching the end of the document?
>
> Having thought about it a bit this may implicit that state-information
> of the grammar checker is not much use at all.
> To take the example you suggested in another posting:
> If 'email' or 'e-mail' were to used consistently it will be a
> difference if you start with the first paragraph that uses 'email' or
> with the 25th that uses 'e-mail'.
>
> Thus I'm wondering if the conflict that seems to be at hand here can be
> solved. Or if we have to decide between one or the other.
This is something that professional copy editors and proofreaders
face all the time. The first time you see a spelling that has some
kind of choice behind it (for example, the first 'email') you make a
note of it. When you hit an alternative later on ('e-mail') you
change this to match the first one you saw. If it turns out that the
author uses e-mail a lot and email only rarely, you might need to go
back and reverse the earlier changes.
Therefore, in some sense it doesn't matter where you start the
checks. It is a manual process. The important thing is that the
grammar checker can highlight the inconsistency to the user, who
might choose to do a global search and replace. If we're not careful,
the grammar checker will have cached stale information (e.g.
asserting that all spellings should be 'email' even after the user
has changed them all to be consistently 'e-mail'), but I can't see
any simple solution to that.
Best wishes
Matthew
--
Matthew Strawbridge http://www.philoxenic.com (01353) 663650
Bespoke software development and freelance technical copy editing
{ "Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the
only thing." -- Albert Schweitzer }
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