A wise engineer once summed up a feature list of an application that was about to make its 1.1 release as “Now, with Error Checking.” 2.1 Beta 3 of SharpMT doesn’t have any additional error checking, but it now includes Spell Checking.
Pocket SharpMT – Sorry kids, but this version doesn’t get Spell Checking: the control doesn’t work there. I might opt to someday tap into the Pocket Word engine, but for now it goes without. Aside from matching bug fixes with SharpMT, there’s not much new to this beta of Pocket SharpMT.
SharpMT
Spell Checking – And now for something completely different. There are three new features that came with the Spell Checking control: in-line spell checking, manual spell checking, and spell check options. First the ugly part. The installation process changed again: it now has to register this OCX, which lives in the same directory as SharpMT.exe. [please let me know ASAP if the install collapses!] Now, it also puts some editable modules in the [Your drive and home path here]\Application Data\RandyRants.com\SharpMT directory, which is also where some of the other file-based SharpMT configuration information lives. These files are things that get changed as you change options with the Spell Checker, so it should be OK here even when installed to a locked-down secure machine. This includes the US English directory, a list of available dictionaries (US English only – if you want other packs, email me for configuration information) and some other settings.
What’s the in-line spell checking? This is the red underline that appears for misspelled words when you pause while typing. Type asdasdad, stop typing, and you’ll see a line appear. To get suggested spellings, right click over the underlined word and select an option. What’s the manual spell checking? Click the ABC button on the toolbar, select Spell Check on the menu, or press F7. This will check the Title, Body, Extended Entry, and Excerpt fields (on this draft only!) for spelling errors – if you cancel out of checking one field, the remaining fields are still checked, until you’re told the process is complete. The Spell Checking options dialog (on the Tools menu) is pretty neat, actually – it comes built in with the control. If you have a slower machine, you can turn off in-line spell checking here, along with some other word-ignore settings; this is the window into the user-defined dictionary as well.
Consequently, the install file has doubled in size – the US English dictionary is just over 5MB alone, which is why I’m only including the US version. I know that there’s also a Canadian and UK dictionary available – for other foreign languages I have no idea what they support (much like I don’t know what #MT and MT support through all operations) but you can check the developers site at Spellican.com.
Clickable Blog Link Columns – Columns? Yes, there’s two now. One for title and one for the server based ID. Before anyone asks, no, I cannot put category in there. Why? Because the call I have for Blog Links doesn’t include categories as part of the call. Yes, it would be a nice to have – maybe future XML-RPC calls will support it, but this one does not. So there’s sorting in either order by either title or by ID. The initial default is descending order by ID (yes, numerically, since they are number based) and that’s how they were sorted. The same is true of the Blog Links tab of the Insert Link window. Each has separate settings, so you sort them differently between the windows.
Donations? Did I collect all of the donations I needed to buy this control? Well, no. But we got close enough for me to pony up the rest of the cash and get this out there… personally, I had enough of “dual builds” and frankly, I felt it was about time: too many people have been donating lately to let them walk away with nothing. Donations are still gladly accepted, but now I get to stop whining about them, praise root! That was getting tiresome!
So. Consider this a feature complete Beta. Unless problems start to surface with new (or old) bugs, I’m content enough to call this “Release Candidate 1”.
Download: SharpMT 2.1 Beta 3
Read: SharpMT FAQ
Download: Pocket SharpMT 2.1 Beta 3 (ZIP) | ARM
Read: Pocket SharpMT FAQ
Donation things:
FYI on this. Due to the nature of the changes of the Blog Links, there may (and probably will) be bugs in sync-ing the lists. I uncovered a number of them with deletion and sync-ing partial lists and things, but please take a look (and test) the Blog List/Sorting/Sync-ing features.
Did I say test? Why, yes, you ARE beta testers after all! :D
Wow! Either the donations came flooding in, or you just couldn’t hold out any longer…spell checking is in.
p.
See what happens when you don’t read to the bottom of the page? You redundantly reprint redundant information that you shouldn’t write because someone else already has.
p.
No worries – after looking at the code I injected last night, there will be a Beta 4 before the end of the day. Should clean up any issues that anyone finds with the Links… lost sleep worrying about it. Silly, I know, since it’s a freeware project, but that’s not an excuse for shitty code.