There is an enhancement to the spelling dictionary capability that I consider
very important and which I would like to see as a feature in Open Office
/Writer/: For any given Writer document, it is an optional _internal_ spelling
dictionary.
Below, please find background information and a preliminary, external functional
"spec". (A /special term/ is simply a word in the internal dictionary.)
*Basic Objectives*
1. The spelling of all /special terms/ is to be checked.
2. When a document is emailed to someone, any special terms therein should
not appear to be miss-spelled.
3. The recipient should not have to take any special means for *2.*, above,
to be so.
*Basic Functions*
* The internal dictionary applies only to the document.
o It is in an internal "section" of the document.
* It's function is enable-able and disable-able.
* If enabled
o On spelling checks, the internal dictionary would be checked first,
before going to any outside dictionaries.
o For any "miss-spelled" word
+ Nearest matches would be displayed. For each, internal or
external would be indicated.
+ There would be an option to accept the word into either the
internal or an external dictionary.
* The internal dictionary could
o Be in text format - no styles or such.
o Contain a comment for any word therein
* The internal dictionary is hide-able and displayable.
* When displayed, it is editable.
* It is exportable (as a text file) and import-able.
*Why ?*
* I work with a lot of technical documents and specifications. These
generally have special terms that are unsuitable for any general-purpose
dictionary. Sometimes there are large number of such terms -- as when I am
documenting algorithms or code.
* If my only purpose was _hard copy_ for myself, I could - and have -defined
a special dictionary for the terms. But this is now hardly ever the case.
* Documents, draft and final, are emailed to my peers, bosses, and customers.
o Any special terms will appear to them as _miss-spelled_. This result
is unacceptable.
o They often review and mark up the electronic copy - without
resorting to hard copy.
*What I do Now
*Currently, I use MS Word ( I have played with O.O. Writer, and it is my
eventual intention to ditch MS and go to such as O.O. Writer).
* For MS Word, I have created a simple macro and placed its label, No Proof,
on my toolbar.
o It marks any selection as Selection.No Proofing = True.
o I manually select each special term and invoke the macro.
* Although the above approach
o Satisfies above Objectives 2. and 3., and
o Solves the major problem of the terms appearing to the email
recipient as being miss-spelled,
* It has the following (serious) *Problems*
o It is very laborious: each appearance of a special term needs to be
individually marked
o It violates above Objective *1.*
Say /Trumbauersville/ appears (early) in the document, and
/Trumbowersville/ appears later. One might - mistakenly - mark both
as No Proofing. (/Trum*bauer*sville/ is a town in PA -- it is often
mistakenly spelled as /Trum*bower*sville.)/
o Certain markups and any re-definition of the style removes the No
Proofing marking, and needs to be re-marked.
» This makes it very difficult for the reviewers of the document.
*Results*
With the proposed scheme, all three objectives are met:
* *Objective 1*: Using the above example,
o If one had accepted /Trumbauersville/ and then later typed in
/Trumbowersville, /this later word would be shown as being
miss-spelled.
o If, somehow, both /Trumbauersville/ and /Trumbowersville/ were found
in the internal dictionary, /Trumbowersville /would be easy to spot
and remove.
* The internal dictionary is (transparently) emailed as part of the
document, and would normally be enabled. Thus,
o *Objective 2* is met: The special terms are not shown as being
miss-spelled, and
o *Objective 3* is met: The user did not have to take any means for
this to be so.
* Additionally, if a user wanted to see the special terms used in the
document, the user would simply either
o Enable viewing of the internal dictionary -- to see _what_ the terms
are, or
o Disable the feature -- to see _where_ the terms are used.
*Finally*
I would be pleased to respond to any comments or inquires concerning the above.
» Even if you were not to plan for such a feature, I would still like to know
what you thought of it.
If you were to proceed with this feature, I would also be pleased to
participate in
o Any external specification of the feature: high-level or low-level.
In fact, I could prepare a draft of external spec mostly on my own.
o Any alpha testing of the feature.
» *The implementation of this feature, even /beta/, would be sufficient for me
to immediately switchover to using O.O. Writer.
(You don't know how pleased I would be to drop MS.)*
*Best Regards and Hopeful,
Andrew W. Barnhart
[email protected]*
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