Cool Mac Gear

Review: Spell Catcher X

Product:		Spell Catcher X
Manufacturer:		Casady and Greene
Price:		$39.95 electronic download (upgrades $19.95 until March 31, 2003)
Review by:		Marc Zeedar

I've been the biggest fan of Spell Catcher, Casady and Greene's universal spelling checker since it was Thunder 7. In fact, one of the main reasons I delayed moving to Mac OS X was because Spell Catcher wasn't available. Finally, I reluctantly moved on, hoping that someday I'd have my Spell Catcher back.

Well, that day is here! Casady and Greene have released Spell Catcher X, a completely rewritten application for Mac OS X. (The Mac OS 9 and Windows versions of Spell Catcher are still available.) I downloaded my copy the moment I found out about it and I'm in heaven again.

Why It's Cool
What's so great about Spell Catcher? Doesn't Mac OS X already have a built-in system-wide spelling checker?

Sure, but Mac OS X's spelling checker is like comparing Text Edit to Microsoft Word: it's fine for basic needs, but for real writing you need more power. Here are some of the features that make Spell Catcher unique:

 
• Works in any program, Carbon or Cocoa, without the program being rewritten. It even works with Classic apps (though not with interactive checking).

   

• Automatic typo fixes as you type (such as making sure sentences are capitalized, changing "teh" to "the", converting fractions to actual fraction characters, etc.).

   

• Supports glossaries (shortcuts) that automatically expand into full-length text (such as "mbz" writing out "Marc Zeedar" or "ddd" writing out the current date "Mon Jan 20, 2003").

   

• The ability to look up the definition of any word in the built-in dictionary.

   

• A comprehensive thesaurus.

   

• Multiple custom dictionaries.

   

• Calculate writing statistics on selected text.

   

• Perform handy text clean-up on selected text, such as changing case, curving straight quotes, or removing white space.

   

• Friendly, easy-to-use interface.

   

• Zillions of preference settings, including the ability to specify Spell Catcher settings on an application-by-application basis.

In addition to the above features, Spell Catcher X also supports text in multiple languages, just like the Mac OS X spelling checker.

Installing
Previous versions of Spell Catcher operated as a system extension. With extensions no longer a part of the operating system, Spell Catcher X runs as a standard application. That's convenient as there are now menu options you can choose right from the program's Dock icon:

If you attempt to quit Spell Catcher X, you'll receive a warning that interactive checking will be disabled until Spell Catcher X is relaunched (in fact, it relaunches itself immediately if it's needed).

You activate Spell Catcher X via the system's Input menu (go to the International item in System Preferences and click on the "Input" tab and make sure "Spell Catcher" is checked):

After you choose "Spell Catcher," a small checkmark menu appears next to the Input menu. From this you can turn on interactive checking, check a selection of text, look up words in the dictionary or thesaurus, run macros on text, or set Spell Catcher X's preferences.

You can customize keyboard shortcuts for each of these menu items (the suggestion is to use Control+key combinations so as not to conflict with the shortcuts of other applications), though I prefer mine without shortcuts.

While all this might seem a little intimidating, the install procedure is every simple. Spell Catcher X ships as a disk image and you simply click the install app and reboot when it's done. Then you need to run the Spell Catcher X application manually the first time in order to enter in your serial number and other registration data (Spell Catcher X won't work until you do this).

After that you can activate Spell Catcher from the Input menu and you're all set. In fact, I discovered that Spell Catcher X stays active once you do this, even after reboots, so it's really only something you have to do once.

Preferences
The first thing you'll want to do with Spell Catcher X is adjust the program's settings to suit your needs. There are numerous settings, but they aren't complicated. For instance, here's a screenshot of the spelling settings, which let's you control what kinds of errors Spell Catcher X watches for:

The interactive settings are similar, but unique to stuff that happens while you're typing (like preventing double spaces):

You can also specify what Spell Catcher X does when it encounters a spelling error during interactive checking:

The default option is for Spell Catcher X to play different sounds for different errors (a voice says "Curious" when there's a typo, or "Capitalization" when you've miscapitalized a word). Of course you can turn these off or use your own sounds if you prefer.

One of the most important settings is to tell Spell Catcher X what dictionaries you want it to use:

As you can see, it comes with a lot! Of course you can add your own custom dictionaries as well (click the "Add..." button at the lower left), and any of the "Learned Words" or "Shorthand Glossary" dictionaries you can double-click on to edit.

Note that in this screenshot I've expanded the "applications" drawer on the right side. This lets me add applications to the list and use different settings for each program. The "Universal" setting is the default for all applications. In my case, I've got "REALbasic 4.5.2 Mac OS X" as one of my applications. Within that application only, I've turned off interactive checking (I normally default it to on). For other apps (such as Timbuktu Pro) I've got Spell Catcher X using straight quotes (instead of curly) and told it not to replace double hyphens with a dash character.

Using Spell Catcher X
There are two ways to use Spell Catcher X: interactively (check spelling as you type) or pass it a bunch of text and have it check the entire thing for errors.

Interactive checking works similar to Mac OS X's spelling checking, except instead of visually highlighting the misspelled word, Spell Catcher X plays a sound to alert you of the error. You optionally can have Spell Catcher X immediately display a list of suggestions if you like (annoying if you frequently make typos or use non-dictionary words like technical jargon).

During interactive checking, Spell Catcher X will automatically expand any glossary items or abbreviations you type. You set these within the "My Shorthands" glossary file, and they are way cool. Here's what my glossary file currently looks like (I'll be adding many more over time):

Note that the replacement text can be long, up to 8,000 characters, so it's ideal for boilerplate text (standard text for a letter, your website URL, mailing address, etc.).

Note that interactive checking works in every text field, including Save dialog boxes or typing filenames within the Finder!

In batch checking mode, Spell Catcher X supports Rich Text Format (RTF) so it will preserve the formatting of text in applications that support RTF (otherwise it converts it to plain text and you lose any formatting, such as fonts and boldface text).

But look at the difference between Mac OS X's spelling checking dialog and Spell Catcher X's:

Simple, but not very powerful. The suggestion list is less comprehensive than Spell Catcher X.

I love the way you can see a list of errors on the bottom right and quickly click on the ones you want to fix. Note that you can "learn" new words or add words to your shorthand glossary with just a click. The "Lookup" button shows you the word's definition, in case you want to make sure you're using the word you think you are.

When you are done, click the "Finish" button, and the fixed text is pasted back into your original document.

Macros and Text Clean-Up
One of Spell Catcher's coolest features is it's ability to clean-up badly formatted text. As a graphic designer, I'm often given text that's been munged by email programs or typed in by idiots who insist on pressing "Return" at the end of every line. Sure, I could take the text into BBEdit or another program for manipulation, but with Spell Catcher X I can do it within any program!

Just select some text, choose "Modify Selection" from the Spell Catcher X menu, and select the action you'd like taken. You can even create macros that combine several of these actions into a single step!

One of these actions is the "Statistics" function. It will analyze the writing you pass to it and give you some handy stats:

What's Missing and Other Problems
So, is Spell Catcher X perfect? Unfortunately, no.

There are a few glitches. Hopefully these are minor early-release bugs and will be fixed shortly. Most of these problems are minor and easily worked around, but they might require some configuring.

For example, I like the idea of Spell Catcher X fixing capital letters for me, but I discovered that when you type in an abbreviation, it thinks the period after the last letter is the end of a sentence and forces the next letter to be uppercase (i.e. writing "In Nov. we'll go..." becomes "In Nov. We'll go..."). I could just turn off that feature, but why have that feature if it doesn't work correctly?

I also discovered that the auto-capitalization feature messes up individual word spelling checking. Select a single word and run "Check Selection." Spell Catcher X's suggestions are all capitalized. It apparently assumes the single word is the start of a sentence. Lame.

There are other strange things. Within Timbuktu Pro (a remote computer access application I use frequently), interactive text replacements don't work correctly. Whatever Spell Catcher X tries to type comes out as a series of lowercase a's (so "teh" transforms into "taa" instead of "the").

I also noticed that when you bring up the Statistics dialog, the Spell Catcher X icon on the Dock starts hoping up and down impatiently. It apparently thinks you need to switch to Spell Catcher X, but you don't, since the window's active right in front of you. Switching stops the bouncing, but doesn't do anything else.

These are minor things, familiar to Spell Catcher veterans, and easily avoided (for instance, you can type a Shift-space after a word if you don't want that expanded, useful if you really want to write "teh"), but they may inhibit a beginner.

In terms of application specific workarounds, Spell Catcher X forces you to add each application one-by-one and you can't assign settings to several apps at once. It'd be nice if one could Shift-select several apps and apply the same settings to all of them. And as someone who uses multiple versions of the same application (REALbasic, for example), I wish I could specify an application via wild card, the way that Westcode's OneClick did. Then I could say "REALbasic *" and those settings would apply to any version of REALbasic. Now every time I download a new alpha (every week or so) I have to remember to add that new version to Spell Catcher X's menu and set its settings.

In other issues, while I found Spell Catcher X to be robust and stable, I did notice the occasional speed issue. Sometimes there'd be a pronounced drag before the Spell Catcher X would say "Curious" for a mispelling. This happened on my laptop while in reduced processor speed, but that should still be plenty fast (it's a G4 machine). Perhaps Spell Catcher X isn't very fast on slower machines. Fortunately, the pause before responding was almost always right after I switched to a new application and only during the first misspelling (subsequent misspellings were handled immediately), so it's mostly likely something to do with the way Mac OS X swaps memory.

I encountered a strange crashing bug when I attempted to use Snapz Pro X to capture a screen shot of Spell Catcher X's windows. It locked up my computer so bad not only wouldn't "Force Quit" work, but I couldn't even reboot! (I had to remove my laptop's battery to restart it.) Fortunately, this is a rare issue: most people wouldn't be using the two apps simultaneously (unless you're writing a Spell Catcher X review).

Finally, I wish that Spell Catcher X's interactive mode worked with Classic applications. I still use a few of those and it's frustrating to have spelling checking in Mac OS X but not in Classic.

Oh, and one other nitpick: Casady and Greene's website is molasses slow. I don't know if it was just overloaded, but downloading the 17MB install file took a couple hours (I normally can download 100MB file in a few minutes with my broadband connection). Since the product is currently only available via electronic download, you might keep than in mind.

Summary
Spell Catcher X is an excellent recreation of a terrific Mac OS program: it includes all of the old features plus adds some new niceties (improved interface, more preference options). No shortcut port here! Having it as an application instead of an extension seems to make it a little slower, but I love having my favorite spelling checker back.