OS X’s built-in spell checker is rubbish. Discuss
Yeah, maybe once a month I might find this handoff feature useful. But I'm I writer and at least a dozen times a day I'm irritated by the fact that the open source HunSpell spelling checker is virtually worthless.
* About a third the time, it can't even suggest a correct spelling, yet when I cut and paste that word into a Google search, Google knows the correct spelling about 98% of the time.
* The "Hun" of Hunspell is a group in Hungary. Probably because they have so little money, they'd not bothered to adapt it to English. In English, no -ly word is hyphenated, and yet OS X is so stupid, it regards any two legitimate words as legitimate correct when hyphenated, such as quickly-go. Duh!
* The vocabulary of OS X is poorly roughly that of a college sophomore majoring in PE. Even words that routinely appear in news headlines such as "exceptionalism" aren't know to it. At times I wonder if anyone at Apple is literate. Judging by their ads and products, they seem to spend all their time surfing, listening to music and taking pictures.
You'd think with about $150 billion in the bank, Apple could afford to buy the rights to a professionally maintained vocabulary for OS X. You'd think they could fund enough software development to make Hunspell better than some late-1980s DOS spell checkers. Even a single missing letter or two transposed ones can leave it clueless. And Apple could give us a hyphenation check that not only doesn't do anything stupid, it knows where a particular hyphenation actually is or is not appropriate based on various guides.
Quite a few of us use our Macs to write. It'd be great if Apple would spend some money making OS X's spell checking worth using.
* About a third the time, it can't even suggest a correct spelling, yet when I cut and paste that word into a Google search, Google knows the correct spelling about 98% of the time.
* The "Hun" of Hunspell is a group in Hungary. Probably because they have so little money, they'd not bothered to adapt it to English. In English, no -ly word is hyphenated, and yet OS X is so stupid, it regards any two legitimate words as legitimate correct when hyphenated, such as quickly-go. Duh!
* The vocabulary of OS X is poorly roughly that of a college sophomore majoring in PE. Even words that routinely appear in news headlines such as "exceptionalism" aren't know to it. At times I wonder if anyone at Apple is literate. Judging by their ads and products, they seem to spend all their time surfing, listening to music and taking pictures.
You'd think with about $150 billion in the bank, Apple could afford to buy the rights to a professionally maintained vocabulary for OS X. You'd think they could fund enough software development to make Hunspell better than some late-1980s DOS spell checkers. Even a single missing letter or two transposed ones can leave it clueless. And Apple could give us a hyphenation check that not only doesn't do anything stupid, it knows where a particular hyphenation actually is or is not appropriate based on various guides.
Quite a few of us use our Macs to write. It'd be great if Apple would spend some money making OS X's spell checking worth using.
Comments
Yeah, maybe once a month I might find this handoff feature useful. But I'm I writer and at least a dozen times a day I'm irritated by the fact that the open source HunSpell spelling checker is virtually worthless.
* About a third the time, it can't even suggest a correct spelling, yet when I cut and paste that word into a Google search, Google knows the correct spelling about 98% of the time.
* The "Hun" of Hunspell is a group in Hungary. Probably because they have so little money, they'd not bothered to adapt it to English. In English, no -ly word is hyphenated, and yet OS X is so stupid, it regards any two legitimate words as legitimate correct when hyphenated, such as quickly-go. Duh!
* The vocabulary of OS X is poorly roughly that of a college sophomore majoring in PE. Even words that routinely appear in news headlines such as "exceptionalism" aren't know to it. At times I wonder if anyone at Apple is literate. Judging by their ads and products, they seem to spend all their time surfing, listening to music and taking pictures.
You'd think with about $150 billion in the bank, Apple could afford to buy the rights to a professionally maintained vocabulary for OS X. You'd think they could fund enough software development to make Hunspell better than some late-1980s DOS spell checkers. Even a single missing letter or two transposed ones can leave it clueless. And Apple could give us a hyphenation check that not only doesn't do anything stupid, it knows where a particular hyphenation actually is or is not appropriate based on various guides.
Quite a few of us use our Macs to write. It'd be great if Apple would spend some money making OS X's spell checking worth using.
My my, aren’t you full of yourself.
* The vocabulary of OS X is poorly roughly that of a college sophomore majoring in PE. Even words that routinely appear in news headlines such as "exceptionalism" aren't know to it. At times I wonder if anyone at Apple is literate. Judging by their ads and products, they seem to spend all their time surfing, listening to music and taking pictures.
Quite a few of us use our Macs to write. It'd be great if Apple would spend some money making OS X's spell checking worth using.
Did you major in PE? Because I'm thinking physical education majors wouldn't write a paragraph with a first sentence that nonsensical. Poorly roughly? Are you literate yourself? Also, nice dig, implying "fit = stupid".
Seriously, that's one of the most inane complaints I've ever seen. Truly, people will always find a reason to complain.
My my, aren’t you full of yourself.
Not the first topic he has spammed with this complaint.
Classic fanboi reactions to legitimate criticism of OS X.
OS X's built-in spell check is shit, and it would be nice if it wasn't.
Legitimate criticism is not spammed in every non related article forum topic and is wek written, not a diatribe.
Yes the built in spell check is sh!t but the original criticism posting is as well
For someone who claims to be a writer, I see you don't even take the time to proofread what you write...
He's so full of himself he thinks he doesn't need to proofread his own diatribe...
No, it's a reaction by level headed individuals who can see thru the dogma written by someone who obviously has a slightly oversized chip on their shoulder. You don't make yourself look any better by labelling those people fanboy's. And BTW, you've obviously never relied on spell checkers in the PC world. Get back to me when you've taken them for a spin, then we'll talk.
I have to disagree with you on one part, OS X spell check I've found to be much better and more intuitive to use than what's available in the PC world.
Presumably by "PC world” you mean Windows? I’ve used spell checkers in Windows programs and many are better than OS X’s built-in checker.
Inkling’s post may be poorly written and originally (before I split into its own thread) off-topic, but he is correct that OS X’s spell checker has a very limited vocab, is easily confused by simple spelling errors, and doesn’t know how to hyphenate.
Has anyone heard of the saying, "Attack ideas, not people?"
1. Mr. Inkling, was talking about spelling features of software, not grammar.
2. These forums are not non-fiction papers where grammar is paramount or important.
3. I assume Mr. Inkling wrote "roughly poorly" intentionally, and according to #1 and #2 above are not grounds for attacking a person in order to undermine and discredit his opinion.
Attacking a person (wrong) for how they may or may not have intentionally written something is wrong. If he writes a scientific paper to be written, that's another things. Because someone is a writer, you hold them to higher standards for writing in a forum and their proper use of grammar reflects the legitimacy of their position? Or all are held to their spelling and grammar capabilities and usage at all times. We could just as well attack the person who wrote this logic, because it's not (intentionally) grammatically correct:
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
- Mark Twain.
I also once saw that Mark Twain ended one of his sentences in a book with the preposition "of." The horrors!
Out of the points you raised, I can only concede the hyphenation issue. I find the vocabulary is quite good in OS X compared to its Windows counterparts, and have rarely encountered times when, as you say, it gets easily confused by even simple mistakes.
While "some" apps in the Windows world may have better spell check, and I stress the word SOME, on the whole I've found OS X to be MUCH more advanced, so I fail to see how comments made by Inkling, or yourself, are nothing more than a feeble attempt at nit picking...