Spell checker, grammar checker and thesaurus

Feature requests, and in-depth discussions of features and the way Mellel works

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skaertus
Got the styles thing figured out
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2008 2:31 am

Spell checker, grammar checker and thesaurus

Post by skaertus »

I'm trying to use Mellel as a replacement to Microsoft Word, but I'm having a hard time in doing it.

One of the main reasons for that is, of course, compatibility. Everybody that I know uses Microsoft Word. I don't know a single person who uses LibreOffice Writer or Word Perfect or Apple Pages instead of Word. And I'm probably the only person that I know that has even heard of Mellel. Nobody knows it here in Brazil. And Mellel doesn't work well with Word files. But, frustrating as it is, this issue seems to be well addressed in this forum.

The second big reason is those language functions. Mellel has a spell checker, but that's not enough. Microsoft Word corrects the spelling, the grammar, suggests synonyms, detects when I inadvertedly use two spaces or don't use a space after a comma, automatically corrects when I start a sentence in lower case, and so on. Mellel doesn't do it, but it's very useful. I've seen a lot of purists around here saying that such features should never be implemented in Mellel, but I strongly disagree. I use such features a lot in Microsoft Word, and they really set Word apart from the competitors. Very convenient features.

I tried to install a piece of software which has all these features (spell checker, grammar checker and thesaurus) in Brazilian Portuguese, but it won't work with Mellel, because Mellel doesn't use the spell-checking features of OS X, having its own engine to do the work. That's really annoying. If Redlers wants Mellel to use its own features, then it should beef them up, making them really useful, and supporting several languages. I know, however, that making spell checker, grammar checker and thesaurus for every language requires a lot of work and effort, and may be expensive, especially considering the fact that Redlers is a small company. Alternatively, Redlers should allow Mellel users to benefit from the features built in OS X and from third party software (isn't it possible to turn on and off the use of OS X features, so users can use Mellel built-in system if they want to?).

All I know is that Mellel provides the worst of all alternatives: it has only spell-checker and doesn't allow us to use third party alternatives. I haven't even seen a particular discussion on this topic for about 3 years now. Is there a workaround on this? Will Redlers change it? Is it addressed for a future upgrade?
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