Forums Feature Suggestions Spell checker

Googling "hunspell richedit" (or aspell) shows that it's very much a nontrivial integration. That search returns very few resources and many people asking how to integrate the two with very little success. It might be possible, but it's not trivial. Definitely not 5-7 minutes. Otherwise you (or somebody) would have done it by now, instead of posting about the need to implement spell checking.

Frankly, if it really is that trivial to make, and is meant to be opt-in for the few who need it, this seems like DLL territory to me. As a DLL you'd be able to keep it up to date way quicker than mIRC could, which might be useful.

I've been using tinyspell (a spell checking software designed to work in every application) for a couple of days now, and I'v enjoyed every second of it. Frankly, I don't see why some of you are so adamant about keeping mIRC spell-checking free.
Adding missing words to the dictionary is only a matter of a couple of hours of chatting, and once spell checking is implemented it won't take long before people will start sharing their custom dictionaries to avoid having to add the missing words themselves, so that's one worry gone.
Another argument claims that people will just ignore the red squiggly underlines. As that might be true, people who will ignore it are probably the same people who will just turn off the spell checking feature all together. I mean, do you ignore chrome's spell checker? Probably not. If you care about spelling while chatting as much as you care about it while writing a comment on a forum, then I'm betting you won't ignore the red squiggly underlines. I certainly don't ignore tinyspell's tip boxes.
Sure, it won't stop people from mixing up "pic" and "pig", but that's just being petty... False positive/negatives exist in every software that has spell checking and it's just a matter of getting used to it and knowing how to spot the errors.

This approach could be added quickly but if you start to parse richtext that might lead to unexpected behaviour and will require additional coding.

If you've actually been following this thread you'll see a nice image that proves at least *I* have been ignoring it. I had no choice, because it was wrong. Is your spell checker always correct about the tips it pops up for you? Certainly not. So you will occasionally ignore your spell checker too.



The problem is that you're making a false assumption. Most people do not put as much effort into text on IRC as a forum. This is quite clearly evidenced by the lack of proper capitalization and punctuation over IRC vs. over a forum. The difference stems from the fact that text on IRC (typically) isn't published and archived on the internet for eternity, so the need to expend extra effort to make sure your temporal messages are perfect is usually reserved for people with OCD tendencies.


Finally I say this:

If there's a third party tool that works, why not suggest users download and install that rather than requiring this be re-implemented in mIRC? Then Khaled doesn't need to do anything, and you don't need to wait for this feature. You seem to already have what you want.

As a sidenote, the irony of your post is that you actually have a spelling error in your very first line. There is so much to be said about the "spell checkers are awesome" guy with a spelling error in the very same post, but I probably won't do it justice-- I'll just let it sit there for you to think about:

My English is not perfect and I'm aware of it. I'm not a native speaker as you have probably assumed and that's one of the reasons I want a spell checker in mIRC. Maybe spell checking is more of a feature that fits foreigners better. I'd probably turn off spell checking for my native language now that I think of it.

The software I mentioned is not free and has a lot of flaws/bugs (that wouldn't exist if mIRC implements spell checking natively) that I won't get into describing because it's not really relevant.

You seem to have a hard time understanding my point about false negatives. As I said, false negatives exist and you're right to ignore them. Mind you, ignoring false negatives and actual negatives are two very different things. When I asked if you ignore chrome's spell checker I meant ignoring actual negatives, not false negatives. Of course you ignore false negatives, you'd be a fool not to (why would I even suggest not ignoring false negatives?). Anyhow, some of these so called "false negatives" are not false at all since words like mIRC, aspell do not exist in the English dictionary (the same thing goes for the acronyms 'lol', 'IRC' and alike) - it seems that you have a rather subjective view on false positive. I've also mentioned in my previous post that it only takes a couple of hours of chatting adding those particular words into a custom dictionary that will validate these words.

I wasn't making a false assumption since I didn't say all (nor did I say "most", for that matter) people care about correct spelling while chatting as they do while writing a post on a forum, I said _some_ people do (notice the difference between some and all/most). There's also a huge difference between spelling and sentence formation/grammar (correct forming of sentences, punctuation, etc). I never said that people on IRC care about capitalisation or proper punctuation (although I'm sure _some_ of them do), I simply said some of them care about correct spelling of words. You could argue that spell checkers keep well formed sentences and capitalisation but that's simply not true in all cases, and it's certainly not the kind of spell checker that I think needs to be implemented in mIRC.

And by the way, the error I made was a grammatical error, not a spelling one, and it's far from ironic (see first paragraph) (Thanks for pointing it out to everyone by the way... That was nice of you). You had quite a few grammatical mistakes yourself, just so you'll know.

Really? So everything mIRC implements will be bug free? I understand there are integration problems with a product like tinyspell; but the bugs and flaws are likely the product of poor development, something even mIRC is not immune to. Perhaps try a better product. A quick google search shows that tinyspell is neither the only nor the most popular global spell checker for Windows. Some cost money, yes, but you're also not just investing in mIRC. Certainly there will be other programs that would benefit from global spell checking on your system too, if you really love spell checking. Also, a global spell checker would share the dictionary, so if you add lots of words, that's a big plus too.

FYI tinyspell has a free version according to their site.



And I had already mentioned my disagreement with this assertion in prior posts. Specifically, you're making a few assumptions: 1) the user will "add" a new word every time they come across one. My assertion is that most won't-- this goes back to my false positives fatigue UI issue. If you're presented with a red line every third word you write, eventually you stop reacting and start ignoring. My guess is the only ones who stick with this will be those with OCD behaviours. 2) You're assuming that eventually they will stop using jargon that is not in the dictionary (or that there is some asymptotic curve for the interval with which they get false positives). I take issue with this as well. Most people using IRC for technical discussions (which tends to be a large portion of people using IRC), have an uncountable arsenal of technical terms; the well does not run dry here. I can't even enumerate how many technical terms I personally know (and might use)-- adding them all would likely take way longer than a few hours of chatter. Finally, 3) you're assuming that they only have one dictionary of words to fill. Quite a number of users use IRC in multiple languages. Filling one dictionary full of jargon is one thing, but doing it in each language you speak over IRC? This has UI fatigue written all over it.



Then you're asking the wrong question. No, I won't ignore an actual error, but I wouldn't care that much if I had over IRC (where data is temporal in nature). I have made spelling errors on IRC before. I correct myself, or someone points it out to me, and life goes on. Eventually that data disappears into the backbuffer, only to be seen accidentally when perusing a log file for a URL that I forgot about. The issue is, though, that for every actual spelling error that a spell checker catches (I'm using Chrome as an example here, but this is technically a bad choice, since my text on IRC is a lot more mangled than it is here), there are about ~50 false positives/negatives that I have to "ignore" as well. And that is a very conservative estimate. My guess is this probably is true for many other users, but you can disagree with this statement if you'd like.

You can actually test this theory (and I'm tempted to, myself) by scouring your log files on an arbitrary large channel, and count the number of actual spelling errors, then run the text through a spell checker and see the total number of errors reported by the tool. My guess is number of legitimate errors will be a small value, even on the absolute scale, and the number of false positive/negatives will be orders of magnitude larger. This is why I question not the purpose, but the effectiveness of such a feature. Is it worth the effort to catch a handful of errors when there are third party tools for those who care enough or need it? I don't think the idea that "spell checkers will help people and therefore be worthwhile at any cost" should necessarily be taken at face value. Studies have shown that they don't make a difference for primary-school children, which is admittedly not the same demographic, but still somewhat enlightening. I'm not questioning that spell checkers sometimes work, I'm questioning the value-add of this feature; will it work often enough to be worth the effort put into integrating and maintaining it?



No problem. It's not every day the OP helps make my point for me. It was a spelling error, though. "I'v" is a typographical error-- your grammar was correct, you missed a letter-- your spell checker did not catch this because "v" is only one letter long (we discussed why single letters are exempt previously in the discussion). You'll notice that "I'vx" does properly show up as an error in Chrome. This goes back to my point about the ineffectiveness of spell checkers.

In general, the only people who actually care about spelling on IRC are the people typing. Rarely have I seen anyone complain about someone else's spelling unless it's so bad that you can't understand what's being said. If no one reading what you write cares, then the benefit is very minimal.

I care about spelling and I will point out spelling and gramatical errors to people when I see them on things that aren't temporary. I don't point out errors on IRC because, as argv0 stated, it is temporary and fixing errors has no value there. I also limit where I point out errors in other locations, such as forums. Although posts are more permanent, pointing out errors just derails the threads. Besides, posts are rarely significant enough that errors matter. It's not like a resume or essay where errors can cost you. The point is that IRC really isn't a medium where spelling and grammar matter.

Even though I care about spelling and grammar, I usually ignore the red squiggly lines from spell checkers. In most cases, they are wrong. I also rarely add words to the dictionary unless I get tired of seeing the red squiggly line on the same word over and over. I do, however, pay attention to the green squiggly lines for grammar because those are often right. A spelling error or typo now and then really isn't as bad as horrible grammar, imo. It's very easy to overlook a spelling error when reading something, but bad grammar sticks out like a sore thumb. Even so, I don't think we need a grammar checker on IRC either for the same reason that I don't see any significant benefit to a spell checker. It is temporary and *very* few people care if you type something incorrectly.

Here's an example of how bad spelling usually doesn't make something difficult to read...



Note that no such study was actually made and this is just a common example of how spelling errors don't necessarily make something difficult at all to read. Also note that not everyone can read this as quickly as a correctly spelled sentence and anyone who isn't a native speaker will probably have more difficulty. However, most native speakers can read it as well as a normal sentence.

The point being that spelling errors aren't the end of the world and that correcting them really only matters on something that is permanent, or at least semi-permanent. Other than logs that very few people read, IRC is not permanent at all. Grammar is usually more important, but it's still not important on IRC.

As I said, I actually do believe this is on Khaled's list of things to do. I don't think it's very high on the list, though. Anyone who really cares about spelling should look into 3rd party alternatives because it could be years before you get something added to mIRC.

Actually, I'm a much better speller now because of spell checks than I was in school, so this theory is incorrect. I learned over time how to get rid of the little red lines.

Auto-correct on the other hand is pure evil.

I'm certainly all for a spell checker in mIRC. I'll have to check out some of these scripts.

Proof by example much? One success story does not prove every case. It's also not necessarily even a success story, since this is not a proper controlled experiment. How can you really say you became a better speller because of spell check and not, say, just due to simple experience/practice of writing multiple papers over the years? You can't-- there's no control. This is exactly what conjecture is.

For years I've been a user of mIRC and one of the features I have always long for is a built-in spellchecker.

Through the years I've seen many scripts claiming to do such job but they all fail. I've also seen many threads with discussions about this matter and the one thing that ends all conversations is the Dictionaries. Well, why can't mIRC just come with a built-in spellchecker [spellcheck support] and we the end-user install Aspell or the dictionaries found at OpenOffice.org? What is the problem with this particular scenario?

A good example of a program that comes with spellchecker support but without the dictionaries is Pidgin [ http://pidgin.im/ ] If the end-user really cares for the spellchecker then it has to download and install the dictionaries either from OpenOffice.org or Aspell.

It isn't that people wont notice the red underline, it isn't that people in chats don't care; the fact is that throughout the years hundreds of people have requested and shown interest for this feature.

Please mIRC, please.

Hundreds of people wanting something is a small drop in the bucket considering the many thousands (hundreds of thousands probably) who use mIRC. There is far more support for emoticons (or images in general) than for spell checking and that's still not part of mIRC. Hundreds of people isn't much considering the number who use mIRC, so that's not really a great reason to add a feature.

If you read through the thread, I think you'll find that using external dictionaries is already what people are suggesting. No one is suggesting that mIRC create its own dictionaries. Or if they are, they're crazy. That would require way too much time for Khaled to maintain many dictionaries for many languages.

As I pointed out, Khaled most likely (this is a guess) has this on his To Do list. But don't expect it to happen anytime soon. For one, mIRC updates that include major features usually only come out about once a year. And spell checking is not a critical feature that would benefit the most people, so I am sure it's far down the list (just like emoticon support). I'm sure it will happen some day... but it probably won't be for years.

I haven't even seen "hundreds" of users ask about this feature. It seems you are exaggerating the issue. In fact, I just did a search on "spell" in the forums (over ALL forums) over the last 5 years, I only came up with 59 names-- note that not all of these names even support spellchecking (I remove the obvious ones), so it would probably be more like 50 names. 50 is a far cry from "hundreds", let alone even one hundred. And this is over 5 years.

As a paid user I'd like to say I'd love to see aspell & or hunspell support added as an option. X-chat has it, it would be great for mIRC too.
Anyone that dislikes spell checkers could just leave it turned off.