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One of the legacy Mac OS utilities I miss most in OS X is SpellTools, my favorite free-standing spell checker. While 0S X includes its own spell check utility, it only works with Cocoa applications (e.g.: Stickies; Text Edit; Okito Composer; Mail) and my general factotum text and HTML application is Tex Edit Plus, which is a Carbon app.

The little freeware spell checker Excalibur has been carbonized, but I find it cumbersome to use, and SpellTools, which is not carbonized, will not check OS X native applications from Classic mode. Consequently, my provisional workaround has been to copy and paste text to be checked from Tex Edit Plus into Text Edit, run the OS X spell checker (which I’m not crazy about), and then copy and paste the corrected text back into TE+. Another possibility is to use the Eudora email application’s built in spell checker in a similar manner.

This of course is inefficient and time-consuming, so I’ve been looking around for an alternative solution, and one candidate I’ve found is Grammatica -- a new, free-standing spell checker and grammar checker just released by UltraLingua. Grammatica is also available in a bilingual version that works in both English and French, which is the variant I tested. This feature is of limited utility to me, since my command of French is essentially what I’ve learned over the years reading cereal boxes at the breakfast table here in officially bilingual Canada. However, for those who work in both languages, Grammatica’s linguistic ambidexterity could be a killer feature.

Grammatica features include:
-- A powerful spelling and grammar checker, currently available in English and French
-- Detailed explanations of grammatical and stylistic problems, with suggestions for correction
-- Personalized grammatical lexicon, allowing for virtually unlimited expansion
-- Interaction with many other applications via the clipboard
-- Customizable parameters, allowing you to activate or deactivate certain features
-- Choice between interactive correction (error by error) or global correction or entire document (all detected errors marked in red);
-- Automatic detection of language (bilingual version only)

My immediate personal interests were would Grammatica prove a good spell-checker?, and would I be able to use it to check text produced in Tex Edit Plus in OS X?

Grammatica currently supports only the legacy Mac OS X, which means that it has to run in Classic mode under OS X (a Mac OS X version is in development). The installation went smoothly and quickly onto the copy of Mac OS 9.2.2 that I use for Classic mode in OS X. There was no necessity to boot into OS 9.2.2 itself for the install. I just double-clicked the very slick Grammatica installer in the OS X Finder and it did its stuff. There was also no need to restart Classic after the install.

There are several ways to check spelling and grammar with Grammatica.

• Direct entry
Type your text directly into the text editing window of Grammatica and save it after running the grammar check.

• Check the Clipboard
Grammatica can run a check on the contents of the Clipboard. To do this, copy text from your working application (or text window of most other applications), go to Grammatica, and request “Check the Clipboard.” Once the correction is complete, select all the text in the Grammatica window, return to your home application, and paste the corrected text.

• Open a document
Grammatica can open and check “text only” documents.As a rule of thumb, any document which can be read by SimpleText or TeachText can be checked by Grammatica.

• Drag - Drop
Grammatica can be used with the Drag & Drop technology developed by Apple and distributed with system 7.5 and later. To learn more about Drag & Drop, consult your Macintosh documentation.

• AppleEvent (Word Services Suite)
The procedures for launching a grammar check from within programs using AppleEvents present the double advantage of retaining all text layout features and of automating the initiation of the check.In addition to typographical styles (boldface, italics, etc.), paragraph breaks, table placement, etc., are also retained. You do not need to quit your client application in order to activate Grammatica; rather, a link has been established between the two programs to accomplish this.

In the case of a checking session launched by AppleEvent, Grammatica will display a checking window titled “Checking:”, followed by the name of the host application. The window will be grayed and will display an extra button, “Stop.” This button allows one to interrupt the checking of the displayed text and to save any changes made back to your original document.

For example, in the AppleWorks word processor module, you can choose Grammatica as a service in the “Language Tools” preferences.

I found “Check the Clipboard” to be the most convenient mode for checking text from OS X native documents with Grammatica in Classic mode. The clipboard is common to both OS X and Classic.

When you your spell check is complete, you can either paste the corrected clipboard contents back into the original application, or save them as a new text document. That’s not as slick as SpellTools, which checks the text in the original application, but it’s not an OS X issue. Grammatica works exactly the same when you’re booted from OS 9.

The Grammatica spell checker works pretty similarly to other spell checkers. Words with questionable spellings are highlighted and you are presented with several options.

A Global checking option allows you to check the text all at once, without stopping at each detected error. Spelling errors are underlined and colored in red, and syntax errors are italicized and colored in red.The highlighting of errors appears only in the Grammatica window and will not be saved in your document.Only the following errors are detected in global checking mode:
• Incompatible word types
• Agreement error in the noun cluster
• Subject-verb agreement error
• Past participle agreement error
• Predicate adjective agreement error
• Elision or disjunction error
• Verb tense error

The Grammatica interface window includes:

• Text editor
Displays the text to be checked.You can type your text into the text window directly, or paste or drag text from another program. Standard style features (boldface, italics, underlining), as well as color, formatting, and font, will not be affected when text is imported from another program, although these features are not visible in the Grammatica text box.

• Suggestions
Displays suggested corrections whenever Grammatica detects a problem.

• Explanation
Provides an explanation of the nature of the error Grammatica has detected.

• Check
This button launches the grammar and spell check of the document, and resumes it after detection of an error. If Grammatica flags a word or phrase which you decide is correct,you can ignore the alert by clicking on the button to resume checking.

• Ignore
This button instructs Grammatica to ignore an unrecognized word through the entire checking session.

• Add
The “Add” button allows you to modify the contents of the active lexicon. Click on it to add a word to the active lexicon. Grammatica will recognize the term in all subsequent spelling checks.

• Replace
This button allows you to replace selected text with a suggestion which you have selected from the suggestion box. (Or, you may simply use the enter key,

• Plural
This button displays the plural form (or forms) of a selected word. You may choose a plural form by clicking on it. By clicking on the cancel button, your text will remain unchanged; the replace button will replace the word with its plural form. (If you have selected more than one word in the text zone, the plural for the first word will be given.)

• Conj.
To view the conjugation of a verb you have selected, click on this button. (More than 6,000 regular and irregular verbs are included, in addition to any you have added to the lexicon.)

The Checking menu

This menu allows you to control the way Grammatica checks your document. You will find items corresponding to each button in the main interface window.

Remove error marks
This item allows you to erase the markings highlighting errors detected during global checking.

Stop without modifying
This item allows you to interrupt a checking session between Grammatica and another application. Any changes you have made will be discarded.

Spelling only
When this item is checked, Grammatica checks only spelling.

Quick search
When this item is checked, the search for suggestions is accelerated, but at the price of thoroughness, especially if multiple spelling errors occur in a single word.

Relaunch automatically
This item, when it is checked,relaunches the checking after each error which has been ignored or corrected.If you are correcting manually in the text editing window, you are required to relaunch checking each time.

Punctuation
When this item is checked, Grammatica also checks punctuation.

I found that Grammatica’s default English dictionary does not have an overly comprehensive vocabulary, but the custom user dictionary dialog is excellent, allowing you to enter words and categorize them as various parts of speech using a pull down menu. You can also purchase a much more extensive add-on dictionary for use with Grammatica.

As for the grammar checker, it works. I’ve never been especially smitten with grammar checkers, from the first one I used in Word 5.1 back on my old Mac Plus in 1993. I have my own prose style, with which I’ve made my living for the past 15 years, but which grammar checkers seem to take issue with in lot of instances.

One annoying little bug I’ve encountered in the Grammatica spell checker is that sometimes the highlight color of questioned words will drop out during a check, leaving just a faint, barely discernible outline around the word. I also found that the non-resizable editing window is annoyingly and uncomfortably small to work with.

Other gripes: Upon rechecking work I had checked with Grammatica using SpellTools, I discovered that Grammatica had missed several misspelled words completely. The optional dictionary might help there. However, “occurred” is not that unusual a word, and “edir” (a typo of “edit”) is not a word at all, at least in English, but Grammatica did not catch it.

In “Spelling Only” mode Grammatica also failed to flag word repeat typos, such as “was was” -- an error SpellTools catches, although it would have flagged these with the grammar check function active.

Another problem that manifested is that when my two PowerBooks are connected via my Ethernet crossover cable network, Grammatica refused to run, informing me that I had only a single-user license. Scott Carpenter of Ultralingua kindly supplied me with a multiuser registration key, but it appears that if you’re hooked up to a network, even barely a network like I am, a single user license for Grammatica will not work for you unless you disconnect first.

The Grammatica documentation is available online in the program in Internet Explorer files. I don’t use IE, but I found that the help files worked fine when dragged to iCab.

This is a powerful little program with a lot of features, and plenty of potential, but still some rough edges that need polishing. It is the best solution I’ve yet found for spellchecking my Tex Edit Plus work in OS X, and I look forward to trying the OS x native version when it becomes available, but for now, the Classic version is quite usable. And there is a free trial version, so you can give it a test drive before comitting.

I’m giving Grammatica a three-A Applelinks rating. It’s good, useful software, but there’s still room for improvement.

Minimum system requirements

To use the grammar checker you will need:
• any Macintosh computer (or compatible),
• MacOS system 7.5 (or later),
• The AppleScript extension, installed and active,
• 3,1 megabytes of available memory for the program, depending on your system,
• The fonts “Geneva”, and “Palatino” must be present in the “Font” folder within the system folder.

Grammatica is available in three configurations:

Grammatica for English ($25)
Grammatica for French ($35)
Grammatica French/English ($45)

Further product information is available on the Ultralingua products page, at: http://www.ultralingua.com/en/products.html).

Trial versions may be downloaded from:
http://www.ultralingua.com/en/download.html

For more information, visit:
http://www.ultralingua.com

Charles W. Moore

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