Checking Out Three Freestanding Spell Checkers -- Excalibur, Spellswell Plus, and Spell Catcher

"Why in the world would I want a freestanding spell checker?" you might ask. "My word processor has a perfectly good one, doesn't it?"

Well, probably yes. However some other programs that you compose text in may not have built in spell checkers, examples being text editors like Tex-Edit Plus and BB Edit Lite, Apple's SimpleText, some email programs like Eudora Light, and even HanMac Software's very cool HanMac Word and HX Write word processors. You may also find that a powerful, freestanding spell check program like Casady & Greene's Spell Catcher offers powerful features not supported by the built in spell checker in your word processor.

For example, while I dearly love my favorite word processing program, Nisus Writer, I so rarely produce documents that need formatting for hard-copy printing these days, that I've discovered that Tom Bender's wonderful little text editor, Tex-Edit Plus, can handle about 90 percent of my word processing requirements, and is quicker and more nimble than Nisus, which itself is one of the speediest full- featured word processors.

However, I'm a minimalist, and I like to run as lean as possible without giving up the functionality I need. For the sort of writing I do, Tex-Edit Plus has pretty well all the features I require, except one -- a spell checker. Additionally, I do almost all of my HTML conversions in HanMac Word's very cool little HTML module, and I also use Eudora Light, so a freestanding spell checker is very useful to me.

In this article, we will look at three dedicated spell checkers for the Macintosh: Excalibur, Spellswell Plus, and Spell Catcher.

Excalibur 3.0.1

Excalibur 3.0.1 by Rick Zaccone and Robert Gottshall is a freeware spelling checker that can spell check documents created by any text editor such as Tex-Edit Plus, BBEdit, Alpha, Emacs or MPW. Excalibur will also spell check the clipboard, making it a useful spelling checker for mail programs such as Eudora Light and news readers such as NewsWatcher. It will also work with any word processing program that supports Word Services such as AppleWorks (formerly ClarisWorks) or WordPerfect.

Excalibur is also a very good LATEX spelling checker. LATEX is a collection of typesetting macros. If you are a LATEX user, you can turn on the option that makes Excalibur aware of LATEX.

Excalibur supports Word Services which streamlines its operation with MT- NewsWatcher, Eudora Pro, Communicator, Nisus Writer, and AppleWorks.

The current 3.0.1 version of Excalibur is PowerPC only, and you must have the Appearance Manager installed on your machine. If you have a 68K Mac or you are running Mac OS 7.x without the Appearance Manager, use Excalibur the older version 2.6 instead, which is also still available for download. This version will run on any Macintosh (PowerPC or 68K) running System 6.0.5 or higher. It will even run on a Mac Plus.

To spell check a document either open it in Excalibur using the standard Open menu selection and dialog, or just drag the document icon to the Excalibur application icon.

A wide selection of alternate dictionaries is available for Excalibur, including Indonesian, Swedish, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, British English, Danish, Italian, German, Norwegian, Catalan, an Elements Dictionary that contains the names of all the known atomic elements, and a RSV dictionary with 3447 words and names from the from the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible.

For more information on Excalibur, visit:
http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/~excalibr/excalibur.html

Spellswell Plus 2.1

Working Software, Inc.'s Spellswell Plus 2.1 for Mac is a commercial software spelling checker for use within applications that incorporate the Mac OS's Apple Events, such as Microsoft Outlook Express and Internet Mail and News, Netscape Navigator, Eudora Pro &Light, BlitzMail, CommuniGate, ClarisWorks, NisusWriter, BBEdit, HyperCard, WordPerfect, Omnis 7, Fair Witness, InfoDepot and others. Spellswell Plus works with these programs as if it is built-in.

Spellswell checks for spelling errors as well as common typos like capitalization errors, spaces before punctuation, double word errors, abbreviation errors and mixed case errors.

Other features of Spellswell Plus 2.1:
Completely new look: easier, more intuitive to use.
Finds spelling errors AND common typos such as:
- extra spaces between words
- capitalization errors
- a/an errors before vowel/consonant
- spaces before punctuation
- "double double" word errors
- abbreviation errors
- "mixed-cAse" errors
- Intelligently suggests all the words you might have intended, not just nearby spellings.
- Switch dictionaries on the fly (business, legal, medical, etc.)
- Fast new PowerMac-Native version as well as 680x0 version.
- Spellchecks HTML (web page) documents (Ignores text between brackets.)
- Automatically locates and opens your default dictionary unless you choose another.
- Onscreen color-coded manual for quick, easy reference.
- Spellchecks the Clipboard, so you can't "paste in" errors.

Spellswell Plus can be accessed from the Apple Menu to check five specified programs: MS Internet Mail and News, Eudora Light, AOL, Netscape Navigator, and PageSpinner, by placing custom scripts that come with the program in the Apple Menu Items Folder. When the program is running and you have a message ready to spellcheck, choose "Spellcheck (Whichever)" from the Apple menu, and Spellswell Plus "fetches" the text from your frontmost message window and checks for errors and typos.

The Spellswell Plus spell check dialog box works similarly to most word processor spell checkers. If an unrecognized word appears in a document several times, Spellswell Plus gives you the option of automatically replacing or skipping subsequent occurrences of the word in that particular document.

A standard 93,000+ word dictionary is included with Spellswell Plus, and Working Software publishes a variety of add-on spelling dictionaries, including Medical, Legal, Science, Business, and Geographical dictionaries.

Spellswell Plus has a list price of $49.95, but is available for a limited time at $14.95, A time-limited free demo of Spellswell Plus 2.1 may be downloaded form the Spellswell Website, but only allows two corrections (more on this below).

For more information on Spellswell Plus 2.1, visit:
http://www.webcom.com/~working/spellswell.html

Spell Catcher 8.1

The Cadillac (Mercedes/Lexus) of spellcheck programs is Casady & Greene's powerful and feature-laden Spell Catcher 8 for Macintosh v8.1. The latest version offers better performance, enhancements to the user interface, menu integration with C&G's companion application Grammarian 2, so you can check both your spelling and grammar from one menu, switch languages on the fly from Spell Catcher 8's menu, and improved references sources. Version 8.1 is a free update for registered users of Spell Catcher 8.

Spell Catcher 8 's user interface facilitates looking up definitions, pronunciations, thesaurus entries, spell checking, and more. Spell Catcher 8 has spelling dictionaries that support 8 different languages including US English, UK English, French, Canadian French, German, Swiss-German, Italian and Spanish.

The original Spell Catcher (versions 1.x) was a global tool which could be used with any program the user chose. In Spell Catcher 8.x, the user no longer has to custom select the programs in which it will work. Spell Catcher 8 is automatically available in every program and is now a full-fledged application.

Having used both versions of the program, I can affirm that Spell Catcher 8.x is a big improvement on what was already the class of the field. I did prefer Spell Catcher 1.x's user interface, but because it was a System extension, conflicts, crashes and corruptions were experienced all too frequently. These annoyances are essentially gone with version 8.x, which I have found very stable.

It is also extremely convenient to have a permanent spell check menu that works in all applications. As noted above, with Spell Catcher 1.x, you had to link Spell Catcher to each program separately using a Control Panel, after which the Spell Catcher menu would appear with the application's menus.

Spell Catcher 8.x Features:
• Checks your spelling and punctuation interactively as you type
• Corrects and modifies your writing using an extensive collection of writing modification modules, including form paragraphs, search and replace, statistics
• Much faster than previous version
• "Smarter" and larger word list for each dictionary which provides you with more and better suggestion
• Spell Catcher is now an application, not a control panel. As a result, the program is less likely to cause system conflicts. (Spell Catcher does come with a small extension, but its primary function is to create the new Spell Catcher checkmark menu.) The program has also been redesigned for better looks, clearer terminology.
• Better word list Spell Catcher 8 has a smarter, larger word list. The program provides more, and better, suggestions when you make a typo.
• Support for 8 languages - Spell Catcher can now check your spelling and look up synonyms, in eight different languages. Lookup definitions for English words
• Interactive mode tracks multiple errors Spell Catcher keeps track of more than one error during interactive windows, making Spell Catcher's interactive checking compatible with many more applications, including graphics programs.
• More Modify Selection Modules You now get more Modify Selection modules, such as Strip Characters, Strip White Space, and Word Count. And you can combine these modules into multi-step Macros, which make it easy to do things like cleaning up incoming e-mail by removing "quoting" characters, removing extraneous white space, and forming proper paragraphs by removing "hard" return characters. You can assign macros to keyboard shortcuts for easy access.
• Greater Compatibility - Spell Catcher's Suggest Spelling and Lookup windows are now floating windows, making Spell Catcher's interactive checking compatible with many more applications, including graphics programs.
• Learned Words Editor Spell Catcher offers new editors for Learned Words (formerly called Supplementary dictionaries) and Shorthand Glossaries (formerly Glossaries). You no longer have to edit plain-text files; you can edit these word lists right in Spell Catcher, or drag-and-drop text from another program for easy bulk addition of words. The new editors contain features for easily finding duplicate learned words or shorthand glossary entries.

Other good stuff in Spell Catcher 8 includes:
• Macros
The program includes Modify Selected modules, such as Strip Characters, Strip White Space, and Word Count for quick and easy text manipulation. You can combine these modules into powerful and speedy Macros to handle such tasks as email cleaning and formatting text copied from a Web browser.

• Word Lookup
With Spell Catcher 8, while typing in English, you can look up words in both a thesaurus and dictionary.

• Multi-lingual Capability and Better Suggestions
The "8" in Spell Catcher 8's name refers to its ability to check spelling in eight languages. The languages are: US English, UK English, Canadian French, German, Swiss, Spanish, and Italian. The latest version also contains a "smarter" and larger word list for each dictionary which provides you with more and better suggestions when you make a typo.

• Ignore E-Mail addresses, URLs, and file names (8.1)
The Error Detection Preference to ignore E-Mail addresses and URLs has been enhanced to also ignore file names that end with certain "common" extensions. Examples include ".c", ".p", ".sit", ".hqx", ".txt", ".mov", ".jpg", and many more.

Spell Catcher 8.1 For Mac System Requirements are as follows: Mac OS 8.1 or higher At least 3 MB of available memory At least 15 MB of available hard drive space.

Spell Catcher 8.1 has a suggested retail price of $49.00

For more information about Spell catcher 8.1, visit:
http://www.spellcatcher.com/8/ov/default.html

Conclusions

For a freeware spell checker, Excalibur 3.0.1 (or Excalibur 2.6 for that matter) is a pretty impressive piece of work, and is quite adequate to serve as a spell checker for text-editing and word processing programs that don't come with a spell check feature built-in. Excalibur's main shortcoming is that it is a lot less convenient to use than Spell Catcher and somewhat less so than Spellswell Plus.

On the positive side is of course Excalibur's price (free), and the many dictionaries available for it, and for LATEX fans -- its LATEX support.

While I have used both Excalibur and Spell Catcher quite a lot, I have to confess that my experience with Spellswell Plus is very limited -- mainly because the free Spellswell plus demo is limited to two corrections, so it was pretty difficult to give it a thorough workout. Frankly, I think providing such a severely crippled demo is counterproductive. While it gives you a look at the program and a glimpse of how it works, it's really hardly worth downloading.

Spellswell Plus looks like a capable spell check program with many attractive features. If it sounds like one or more of these would suit your needs, then the "limited time" discounted price of $14.95 (which appears to be one of those permanent limited time offers) is quite modest.

However, if you want the ultimate in freestanding Mac spell checkers, head straight for Casady & Greene's Website and download Spell Catcher 8.1. The free, uncrippled demo works for 14 days, which is a much more sensible trial motif than Spellswell Plus's idiotic two corrections, and should be ample time for you to determine if Spell Catcher is worth the $50 premium over free Excalibur.

In my estimation, Spell Catcher 1.6 was already the best freestanding spell checker, its instability notwithstanding. Spell Catcher 8.1 is not only still state of the art, but it has raised the bar many notches higher. It's so good that you might even be inclined to use it instead of your word processor's built in spell checker.

Moore's Views & Reviews Ratings

Excalibur - 3 stars
Spellswell Plus - 3 stars ( I think)
Spell Catcher - 5 stars

Charles W. Moore

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Tuesday, 09-Feb-2010 11:19:13 EST