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Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With Lousy Browser Spell-Checkers? 96

Posted by BeauHD from the suggestion-box dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader Tablizer writes: Chrome's spell checker doesn't list the proper option for "devine" or "preditor". Soundex would match them and is relatively simple to implement, but most browsers allegedly use the Hunspell algorithm. However, Hunspell doesn't handle incorrect vowels well.

Browsers could offer a "More spelling options" menu item to bring up a wider dialog using alternative algorithms, such as Soundex. Until then, can anyone recommend good spelling plugins?
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Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With Lousy Browser Spell-Checkers? More

Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With Lousy Browser Spell-Checkers?

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  • The dictionary Mozilla has seen fit to bundle with Firefox is, frankly, trash. It is missing a plethora of common technical words which obviously ought to be in it. But this is frankly not a big problem because it is trivial to add words to the dictionary. It would be nice if it would use my words file, though. Remember when Unix software was integrated with the system? Those were the days.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Same here. Unfortunately, these things are _really_ braindead (almost as braindead as the spellchecker in MS office), so they often do not allow direct addition after I finally made it clear to them what the word was. This works especially badly with German umlauts.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Incidentally, I still use ispell/aspell where possible. Ages older and massively better.

  • Use Grammarly! (Score:4, Funny)

    by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Thursday September 28, 2023 @09:10AM (#63883051)

    Then you can get bad spelling recommendations, PLUS bad punctuation recommendations. It's the best of all worlds!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I've never come across a spelling/grammar checker that lets you specify more than just the top level language. As an English speaker it's often worse than that; the only choice is "English (British)" which could mean a number of things, and rarely includes Oxford spellings. Or worse still just "English", which usually means American.

      Same problem with grammar, Gmail tends to phrase things the American way in suggestions.

      • The hunspell dictionaries in Chrome are split in en_US and en_GB.. It is a pretty common split.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xeoron ( 639412 )
      Grammarly is horrible with grammar and misses a lot of other things; plus it often updates and makes webforms to type in impossible until the next update. The better option is MS Editor extension, which covers spelling errors, phrasing suggestions, and better grammar; also has much deeper controls for suggestions from being more PC, to you name it under the sun.

    • Then (no list, try omitting this word for more impact) you (who is the reader? ambiguity can muddle your message) can (try using a $0.10 word) get (too general, try the thesaurus) bad (could cast negative tone to your sentence, use the thesaurus for more impact) spelling (error:3028) recommendations (did you mean hamburger?), PLUS (are you angry? Try initial cap with lower-case) bad (like, you're really bad at this) punctuation (oh just give up) recommendations. (you really suck at writing) It's the best o

  • Use LanguageTool! It is under a Free license, it has browser plugins, and in addition to spell-checking, it also has grammar and style checking. It works very well for English (American and British), German, French, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, and several other languages.

    Link: https://languagetool.org/

    • Agreed. I have been using LanguageTool Basic in Firefox for ages and get on well with it.
    • Thanks for suggestion. Any concerns about privacy given youre sending everything you type to a 3rd party?
    • Oh! Didn't know that one! Thanks!

    • You sound like a shill.

      That spell-checker is cloud-based. It's problematic from a privacy standpoint. And a "Free license" is meaningless when it's not open source, and when they can cut off or start charging for the cloud-based service whenever they want.

  • You even linked to Wikipedia, which lists it as an Indexer. There's nothing there about spell checking...!!??

    Hunspell (https://github.com/hunspell/hunspell) is the algorithm used by a lot of things for spell checking. But it's really only as good as its dictionary, I guess.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      My description was meant to be colloquial, not a tech spec.

      To clarify, Soundex could be used like this:

      1. A word the user types is not in the Hunspell dictionary (or otherwise "fails" as a correct word.)

      2. User right-clicks the marked word for spelling options.

      3. If user clicks on a link called "More Spelling Options" under the ones browsers already lists (presumably) from the Hunspell engine, then user gets a new panel.

      4. The panel lists matches from the Hunspell and/or browser's dictionary based on a Soun

  • Maybe old school, but... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why don't you just learn how to spell? I mean, I get that computers must have become such a crutch in your life that you use them for practically everything, but you should still have basic skills for math, spelling, feeding yourself, wiping your own ass, ...

    • Agreed! Use the same spellchecker that famous writers writers used. No wait, they deliberately mispelled words and there were no standardized spellings (standardised?). Just don't use a spell checker, I mean how hard can it be? Don't use grammarly, just use good grammar instead.

      And if you have a spelling mistake, then... who kares?

      Are we actually creating a generation of ignorant morons who cannot function in society without computers doing all the tasks for them?

  • Learn to spell.

    • Learn to spell correctly.

      FTFY.

      (which is "Fixed That For You.")

    • Spellcheckers are an annoying nuisance, I always turn them off on any program which has one.
      I learned to read and write at school, I have no use for them.

      I know my reply may sound somewhat arrongant, but I'm always wondered why even native english speakers are so dependent on spellcheckers?
      No, english is NOT my native language.

      • Re:Turn it off. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by olmsfam ( 1399493 ) on Thursday September 28, 2023 @10:41AM (#63883287)

        I have the opposite anecdote. My hand has been effed since grade 4, I never learned how to write (properly) with a pen. Every single essay or written work I have ever produced was on a pc or a cellphone. Every product used has had a spell checker. My entire life since I was a preteen.

        I have never, and likely will never, need to memorize the spelling of most words.

        It makes me sad when I see the derision people have for that fact.

        Do you realize just how finite this mortal coil is? Just how long we as Humans spend of our formative lives Memorizing times tables, the number of planets in the solar system, how to read an analog clock , how to write, how to spell, History as a whole. All of it consuming valuable brainspace, valuable years of your life.

        All of it pathetic waste of time. You are going to die, and that skill is going to become useless. Let a machine do it for you. enjoy your life, don't toil uselessly at it like a machine.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          " I never learned how to write (properly) with a pen. Every single essay or written work I have ever produced was on a pc or a cellphone. Every product used has had a spell checker. My entire life since I was a preteen."

          Embarrassing.

          "I have never, and likely will never, need to memorize the spelling of most words."

          Because you don't read, either.

          "It makes me sad when I see the derision people have for that fact."

          Because you are proud of your illiteracy.

          "Do you realize just how finite this mortal coil is? Jus

        • Sure, use the tool if the tool helps you. However these tools only slow me and many other people down. If wear glasses because I have nearsightedness then don't require that everyone use glasses, that would be absurd.

      • It sure helps when you encounter less common words that you may not have encountered more than once or twice prior. 'preditor' for instance, I had never seen before. Of course the built in spell checker just flagged it and somehow is suggesting 'creditor'. And while typing this the spell checker also just highlighted a typo, for which I have fixed and no one would even know about had I not mentioned it.

        BTW you misspelled or mistyped 'arrogant'; but a spell checker would have alerted you. See? Of course n

      • Because the correct spelling of English words is kind of random?
        Perhaps you could write a book about "how to write correctly"? Or about "How do I learn to see my own spelling mistakes"? Or about "How to teach writing g in a way that people learn to write without making spelling mistakes"?

        The last part seems ultra important. Yet I never met a teacher who could teach writing. Only teachers that punish you for a spelling mistake. But have no idea how to teach you to avoid that mistake.

    • I turn it off because spellings are very often wrong. This is not the fault of the spell checker, per se, but because there are multiple spellings and multiple words that can fit into the context. When the spell checker decides to correct the spelling of my coworker's name just because it's foreign, then you know it must be disabled. It slows people down because of all the wasted time going back to fix "corrected" words and names, and putting the grammar back to what you want.

      How come in my phone I am al

    • Spelling is easy.
      Especially in languages like German, Italien, Finnish or Japanese.
      Seeing that a word is misspelled is difficult.
      Especially when you actually misspelled something and autocorrection fixes into a similar word, like brake versus break.

  • I use Safari (Score:5, Funny)

    by beelsebob ( 529313 ) on Thursday September 28, 2023 @09:44AM (#63883121)

    Itâ(TM)s spell checker works very well.

    • But its punctuation sucks ass.

      • To be fair, the fact that it doesn't play well with Slashdot is more Slashdot's fault, though I don't like how it defaults to the fancy-pants "smart" punctuation (which is broken on Slashdot--and that's on Slashdot for not supporting Unicode).

      • Thereâ(TM)s nothing wrong with its punctuation. This is a /. bug. /. also canâ(TM)t correctly show my countryâ(TM)s currency symbol correctly, and that has nothing to do with punctuation. But you know, feel free to keep whinging about the wrong thing and generally just pissing in to the wind.

  • It makes no sense to me that tech giants are working more on putting AI chatbots in our next coffee machine than putting a decent spellchecker in every software. If we can have ChatGPT write in a correct grammar, syntax and orthograph, there is no way this is a technological problem. Also, I'm writing this comment in english on a browser that is setup in french, and every word I write right now is underlined in red. Don't tell me Google can't help me in more than a language at once. I would need it even mor

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      In general the IT industry spends too much time chasing the latest buzzwords rather then perfecting existing technologies. USA is a throwaway culture, and our IT mirrors this. I can rant on for days on perfectly good tools that merely needed enhancements, but were tossed to chase fads.

      > If user experience mattered, the whole e-commerce side of the textile industry would have shifted to a standardized sizing chart based on accurate and pertinent anatomical measurements to limit waste and facilitate shopp

  • In the same vein as Generic and Anonymous, I'd like to suggest the broader picture is that software tools have jumped the shark... The tool part is just a lure to get you to install it. Then if it's shite... woopsie for you... and delicious data gathering for the software.

    In your head it's 10 or 20 years ago, when software like us old timers used, was a tool. It was used to get stuff done. Now, software is closer to entertainment, notwithstanding social media and actual entertainment, and the primary purpos

  • Spell checker!? In my day, browsers didn't have spell check, and we liked it that way! Now excuse me, I have clouds to yell at.

  • I don't (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Thursday September 28, 2023 @10:05AM (#63883185)

    These things should be left to and built into the OS. Having n applications maintain a library through n different ways is a recipe for disaster.

    MacOS does spell check as you type in any application, Linux can emulate the same behavior in Xorg by routing your keyboard through a custom program.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      That would require coordination between MS, Apple, Google, and the Linuxes (Lini?). It would be more logical, a better factored universe, but that's too unlikely with humans.

    • The stuff built in to macOS is great. It annoys me to no end that Microsoft reinvent the wheel in Office and it doesnâ(TM)t work as well. No right click and choose âoelook-upâ in their apps either. There was a time when I could copy a word from a message in Outlook and paste it in to the subject field and then get the normal macOS experience, but Microsoft fixed that âoebugâ.

  • which admittedly is a pain (I'll admit I sometimes type junk and then right click my way through a post correcting it) or if I just can't remember how to spell a word google's "did you mean" will find it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      > if I just can't remember how to spell a word google's "did you mean" will find it.

      Some browsers give you the option to search a flagged word in the browser's default search engine. While helpful, it's still more steps, and a privacy risk, since the search engine now knows about a word you used, and will probably display spam for it (including in affiliated sites).

  • I'm currently using “LanguageTool” in both Chrome and Firefox, and it's good enough for what I want / need. It still has the odd miss, but adding words is simple, and I have no complaints overall. The biggest and most important feature in a good language tool is handling Proper English vs Americanized English. When you see words like colour misspelled, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, especially when it's a Canadian company making the mistake.

  • I simply ignore the spellcheckers.

    Iyt duz nawt hert me muchh.

    Seriously though, I'm kinda a fiend for proper spell and grammar checking.

    And bad spellcheck drives me up and through the wall.

  • To do the old 'google word that spell check isn't recognizing' automatically and integrated (in that, the suggestions just come up in the context menu, and it doesn't have to open a separate browser window or anything) that actually works really, really well.

    I assumed this was a baked-in Chromium option that was carried over. But maybe it isn't??

  • I never use autocorrect with spellcheckers, and I never copy and paste with ChatGPT. With both tools, I get some information that I then use my own mind to parse and determine if the information is correct and what I want to do with that information. Same thing with the obstacle detection on my car, which is sometimes correct and sometimes incorrect. It doesn't bother me because I recognize it as a computer algorithm with less than 100% and greater than 0% accuracy. The false obstacle warning doesn't bo

  • In Chrome there is an option for "Enhanced spell check", basically it does a good search for them when you right click on it, both of these presented the correct spelling with it.

    • Chrome:

      [Enhanced spell check]
      Uses the same spell checker that's used in Google search. Text you type in the browser is sent to Google. [Emphasis added]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Paxtez ( 948813 )

        Yeah, and?

        I thought about adding a blurb about that, but it's like already on the tin. There are tons of stuff in Chrome that sends stuff to Google. If that is a concern for you, don't use Chrome/Google.

        Frankly I would trust Google over some random 3rd party plugin.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          If one of the other browsers added that feature and advertised "better than Chrome's checker, and doesn't send anything to the cloud", then Chrome would be tempted to follow suit.

          I normally use FireFox, but sometimes have to use Chrome and Edge.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Paxtez ( 948813 )

            Yeah perhaps, but it seems like that is difficult to do. Office/Word has had a spell check for decades and it is still trash, I mangle words bad enough even after multiple revisions Word will still not know the (relatively common word) I was aiming for.

            The Chrome offline version seems about equal to Word.

  • Do it the old fashioned way. Turn off the spell checker and learn to spell.

  • It used to be better but they crippled it to push their enhanced connected spell check.

  • Sometimes squeezing off a few rounds from my 12 gauge shotgun will solve the matter promptly.

    Works on them pesky "revenuers" that keep comin' around the cookers !

    .

    /sarcasm

  • If you're using words like "divine" and "predator", you're too literate to need a spelling checker. On the rare occasion that you can't figure out how to spell a word, use a dictionary site or even just run it through a search engine.

  • Learning to f'ing spell and form sentences. I don't expect my German spelling or grammar to be correct, mostly because I don't speak German. But I do expect my English (American) spelling and grammar to at least be of adult level, because, you know, basic education.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by dhobbit ( 152517 )

      Well for some of us that isn't an option. Take a fair bit of dyslexia and ADHD, mix that with a Florida education and spelling just isn't a thing. Given the Florida education I consider it a win that I can form words or covert O2 to CO2. A decent spell checker goes a long way to making my Florida English almost comprehendible.

      More powerful assistive technologies benefit everyone but some of us more than others.

    • I tend to mix up similarly looking/spelled words in my head. The training exercises to overcome this would be time-consuming, especially if I don't want to have to refresh it all in a few years. I'm not Shelden Cooper.

      Is it rational to spend roughly 40 hours a year training/refreshing my head, or just use a spell-checker? What is your break-even hour number? How are you computing "rational use of time"?

  • My spelling is unusually fine but, I may make a typo, and there are some words (probably stolen from French or something) that are spelled so incomprehensibly I can't keep them in mind. So, the spelling checker is always on. I'd feel foolish to make mistakes when there is a readily-available advisor to prevent it.

    That said, I have to believe that the author here has never actually USED the Soundex algorithm, which is simple, fast, and almost completely useless. If you want it to suggest "brick" when you wro

  • I'm using Firefox and Chromium on Debian with their "English (United States)" spelling dictionaries. When I type "devine" and "preditor" into this text field, it suggests "devise" and "divine" as the top two suggestions for the former and "predictor" and "predator" for the latter. Chromium does the same.

    The only issue with these systems is that they're not very comprehensive, missing items like "bartending", "customizable" (present in Firefox, absent in Chrome), "forecasted" (present in Chrome, absent in

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