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In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

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Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#61

Post by vidarh »

rob74 wrote: post #57
sien wrote: post #46

Prowrite on the Amiga had a real time spell checker before Word did. Possibly there were other programs that did as well prior to that. But Prowrite did it and had a red squiggly line under incorrect words. https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue123/P215_1_REVIE...

Are you sure about that? The page you link says that "The 100,000-word spelling checker lets you check a range of text, look up a single word, check continuously, and add words to the user dictionary", but doesn't mention underlining words. I also couldn't find a screenshot of that feature. Actually, with the AmigaOS 1.x color scheme, the squiggly lines would have probably been orange, because the standard color sche…

I can't find screenshots or descriptions of that either (but it doesn't really say much either way - I couldn't find much about the spellchecking at all). But re: colors, a lot of applications would open their own screens and set their own palette, so the Workbench palette isn't necessarily relevant.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#62

Post by jll29 »

> he accomplished this without the source code

Sure thing, who needs source code? This is HN.

But instead of reverse-engineering, I would just find or write an emulator, in case I would be asked to "port" another software.

It's actually sad that for the most part, we don't know who is responsible for the good and bad features of software we use. In movies, there is an extensive practice of showing "credits" at the end, and I enjoy reading them in detail. Software development should have the same culture (some games do, and then some "Easter eggs" do).

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#63

Post by jll29 »

sien wrote: post #60
rob74 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? The page you link says that "The 100,000-word spelling checker lets you check a range of text, look up a single word, check continuously, and add words to the user dictionary", but doesn't mention underlining words. I also couldn't find a screenshot of that feature. Actually, with the AmigaOS 1.x color scheme, the squiggly lines would have probably been orange, because the standard color sche…

The 'check continuously' is the thing. I'm going to run it and have a look in a bit and get back to you. It looks like 1st Word on the Atari ST also have a continuous spell checker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Word From the link for 1st Word : "Among the many new features was a spell checker with a 40,000 word dictionary, although lacking many American English terms,[11] a mail merge program, footnotes and semi…

1st Word on the Atari ST 520+ with monochrome monitor: that was how the far future felt like in 1986.

With the exception of the somewhat wobbly cheap keyboard, that was the best and most distraction-free setup I have ever seen for WYSIWYG word processing (sadly never tried the Xerox workstations).

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#64

Post by yreg »

frereubu wrote: post #58

I would really like to be able to entirely disable spell checking. I know it's a very niche desire, but I'm happy to live with my mistakes, and there are regularly bits of slang, technical terms, acronyms etc that I have to get it to "learn" which I'd rather not have to. I often wonder how people who write in non-standard English manage these days. Can't imagine James Joyce would have been a fan.

What's stopping you? I have spekl check disabled on all my devices.

And I'm not even a native speaker, so I would certainly benefit, but like you I hate when it complains (or autocorrects!) intentional strings.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#65

Post by zabzonk »

frereubu wrote: post #58

I would really like to be able to entirely disable spell checking. I know it's a very niche desire, but I'm happy to live with my mistakes, and there are regularly bits of slang, technical terms, acronyms etc that I have to get it to "learn" which I'd rather not have to. I often wonder how people who write in non-standard English manage these days. Can't imagine James Joyce would have been a fan.

MS Word has a "check spelling as you type" option which can be turned off - same with grammar.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#66

Post by zabzonk »

yreg wrote: post #64
frereubu wrote: post #58

I would really like to be able to entirely disable spell checking. I know it's a very niche desire, but I'm happy to live with my mistakes, and there are regularly bits of slang, technical terms, acronyms etc that I have to get it to "learn" which I'd rather not have to. I often wonder how people who write in non-standard English manage these days. Can't imagine James Joyce would have been a fan.

What's stopping you? I have spekl check disabled on all my devices. And I'm not even a native speaker, so I would certainly benefit, but like you I hate when it complains (or autocorrects!) intentional strings.

> I have spekl check disabled on all my devices.

Obviously :-)

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#67

Post by aa-jv »

sien wrote: post #46

Prowrite on the Amiga had a real time spell checker before Word did. Possibly there were other programs that did as well prior to that. But Prowrite did it and had a red squiggly line under incorrect words. https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue123/P215_1_REVIE...

PC-Write on DOS had it as well.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#68

Post by rob74 »

jll29 wrote: post #63
sien wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'check continuously' is the thing. I'm going to run it and have a look in a bit and get back to you. It looks like 1st Word on the Atari ST also have a continuous spell checker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Word From the link for 1st Word : "Among the many new features was a spell checker with a 40,000 word dictionary, although lacking many American English terms,[11] a mail merge program, footnotes and semi…

1st Word on the Atari ST 520+ with monochrome monitor: that was how the far future felt like in 1986. With the exception of the somewhat wobbly cheap keyboard, that was the best and most distraction-free setup I have ever seen for WYSIWYG word processing (sadly never tried the Xerox workstations).

Sorry, but as a former Amiga user I have to jump on the opportunity to disrespect the Atari ST: wasn't the same thing (WYSIWYG text editing or even desktop publishing on a monochrome monitor) already possible years before with the Apple Mac? I mean, it was nicknamed the "Jackintosh" for a reason. Ok, it was only one year (the Mac being famously released in 1984, and the Atari ST in 1985). And of course the Atari ST was more affordable, it had that going for it.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#69

Post by sien »

rob74 wrote: post #57
sien wrote: post #46

Prowrite on the Amiga had a real time spell checker before Word did. Possibly there were other programs that did as well prior to that. But Prowrite did it and had a red squiggly line under incorrect words. https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue123/P215_1_REVIE...

Are you sure about that? The page you link says that "The 100,000-word spelling checker lets you check a range of text, look up a single word, check continuously, and add words to the user dictionary", but doesn't mention underlining words. I also couldn't find a screenshot of that feature. Actually, with the AmigaOS 1.x color scheme, the squiggly lines would have probably been orange, because the standard color sche…

OK.

It does have a real time spell checker. But it doesn't seem to have the squiggly line. The screen blinks at you when you type a word it can't find.

I've just run Prowrite 2 and 3.1.1 via FS-UAE.

So my memory is wrong about that feature have a red squiggly line.

It did have realtime checking. Also Prowrite was WYSIWYG. The realtime checking is neat, but it's actually a bit annoying with the blink. The red squiggly line is a better way to show that there is an unrecognised word.

Thanks for getting me to check.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#70

Post by abanana »

vidarh wrote: post #61
rob74 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? The page you link says that "The 100,000-word spelling checker lets you check a range of text, look up a single word, check continuously, and add words to the user dictionary", but doesn't mention underlining words. I also couldn't find a screenshot of that feature. Actually, with the AmigaOS 1.x color scheme, the squiggly lines would have probably been orange, because the standard color sche…

I can't find screenshots or descriptions of that either (but it doesn't really say much either way - I couldn't find much about the spellchecking at all). But re: colors, a lot of applications would open their own screens and set their own palette, so the Workbench palette isn't necessarily relevant.

Indeed, no relevance at all. Sorry rob74, that's a misunderstanding of how large applications most often tended to work on the Amiga. They didn't generally open a window on the Workbench screen, they opened their own screen. The keyboard shortcut - cycled between them. A word processor's screen could then have 16+ colours.
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