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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

#91

Post by andsoitis »

wheels wrote: post #90

I'm pretty sure that I was the one that came with the idea for adding them to generic text widgets when I implemented that in KDE (originally to add spell checking in KMail, since spell checking in email clients wasn't a thing yet). At that time spell checking was only done in word processors. Pretty quickly every other environment, including Windows and macOS followed suite.

> I'm pretty sure that I was the one that came with the idea for adding them to generic text widgets when I implemented that in KDE (originally to add spell checking in KMail, since spell checking in email clients wasn't a thing yet).

When was it that you added it to KMail?

Word '95 introduced the famous red squiggly underlines in 1995.

I believe KMail introduced spell-checking in 2004.

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

#92

Post by sbuttgereit »

orthoxerox wrote: post #54

I think it was Larry Constantine that really hated them. As he put it, when you are writing, you should always be thinking about your next words, but the squiggles draw your attention to the words you have already written. They shout at you, "Hey, listen! Do you really think you can spell? What's this 'fatouos' thing you've just written?" and will keep bothering you until you stop and go back to click on the undersqu…

Just as a casual test... I opened up Microsoft Word (online version). There's a button on the Review ribbon labelled "Spelling & Grammar", click that and the realtime, inline suggestions and squiggles are off no matter how many errors are present... click that button again and they're there.

So there are two modes... and have been for as long as I can remember (maybe since automatic spell check was there) and it is just a button press.

Now knowing that it's there... well... how many people review feature documentation these days, especially for something that is "feature rich", like Word?

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

#93

Post by mananaysiempre »

toyg wrote: post #80
jll29 wrote: post #62

> 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 en…

> I would just find or write an emulator Nowadays, yes. Back then, systems could barely run the OS they came with...

Probably not well enough for a game, no. But the Apple II[1] and even the Apollo Guidance Computer[2] used interpreted bytecode to make their programs more compact. (The AGC actually had near-seamless interworking between native code and bytecode!) Also Pascal P-code, Microsoft BASIC’s pretokenized source, almost every Forth implementation ever, etc. The performance cost was pretty significant as you’d expect, but the result was still fast enough for the task.

It was also pretty common to use more capable machines to get some headroom for development tools, either by compiling for one (DOOM on NeXT) or by cross-debugging the system under test from it (a still-in-progress Lisa when developing the Macintosh; a DEC minicomputer, IIUC, when developing MS-DOS). You still do the former when you run an x86-64 image in your Android emulator; you probably still do the latter if you are targeting a microcontroller.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWEET16

[2] https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9064-the_ultimate_apollo_guidanc...

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

#94

Post by frereubu »

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've tried on MacOS and can't seem to figure out how to do it. I seem to be able to on certain apps, but there isn't a global kill switch, which is what I want.

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

#95

Post by Mountain_Skies »

Used to get slick ads for nightclubs and events from promoters with the red squiggles printed on them. Nice, full color, glossy, 4x6 card size ads that they'd stick on car windshields, hand out on the street, and stuff into any nook or cranny they could find. I was somewhat mystified as to what production process they used that allowed for the squiggles to remain and why what they were trying to indicate was ignored as most of the errors were indeed errors. Simply sending a document to a print device normally does not preserve the squiggles but somehow, they would end up in the adverts.

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

#97

Post by zahlman »

orthoxerox wrote: post #54

I think it was Larry Constantine that really hated them. As he put it, when you are writing, you should always be thinking about your next words, but the squiggles draw your attention to the words you have already written. They shout at you, "Hey, listen! Do you really think you can spell? What's this 'fatouos' thing you've just written?" and will keep bothering you until you stop and go back to click on the undersqu…

Do you feel the same way about real-time syntax highlighting?

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

#98

Post by giancarlostoro »

andsoitis wrote: post #91
wheels wrote: post #90

I'm pretty sure that I was the one that came with the idea for adding them to generic text widgets when I implemented that in KDE (originally to add spell checking in KMail, since spell checking in email clients wasn't a thing yet). At that time spell checking was only done in word processors. Pretty quickly every other environment, including Windows and macOS followed suite.

> I'm pretty sure that I was the one that came with the idea for adding them to generic text widgets when I implemented that in KDE (originally to add spell checking in KMail, since spell checking in email clients wasn't a thing yet). When was it that you added it to KMail? Word '95 introduced the famous red squiggly underlines in 1995. I believe KMail introduced spell-checking in 2004.

Reread the claim, the idea to add them to generic text widgets. I think it was around the mid 2000s when Firefox also started adding spellcheck, which is around the time I started learning how to spell things correctly.

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

#99

Post by coldpie »

Lendal wrote: post #74

If you continue in this industry of software creation in a corporate setting, and you put your name into the source code, eventually you will become known for products/features that you never expected to become known for. And the things you had actually worked the hardest on and hoped to become known for will be lost and forgotten to time. The process of creating things is completely within your control but the proce…

I have often felt that software should have a "Credits screen", like movies and video games do. For developers, QA staff, support staff, etc. I opened a bug to create one for our end-user facing software at my last job, but we never actually did it.
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