On Sunday 26 June 2011 17:31:27 Joe Zeff wrote: > I also understand spelling issues; not just from dyslexic posters but > from those who (like me) weren't properly taught as children. In my > case, it took word processors with spelling checkers to teach me > (mostly) how to spell, and I still depend on them. What I don't > understand, I'll admit, is people who either turn them off or ignore the > warnings. Not knowing how to spell is something I can understand, but I > can't wrap my head around the idea of poor spellers who Just Don't Care. Well, I am one of the people who deliberately turn off the spell-checker in my mail client (KMail). Why? Because I often compose mails in non-English languages, sometimes mixing several languages in the same e-mail, etc. And it gets on my nerves when the whole text of my e-mail is underlined in red just because I am writing it in a language that is not English. So far I do not know of any way for KMail to do a context analysis of the text I am typing, guess the language I use and reconfigure the spell-checker on the fly to do its job right. I would love to have such a thing being done for me in e-mail automatically, if possible even when I mix several languages within a single post. But alas, such intelligent spell-checking facilities don't exist AFAIK, at least for e-mail clients. Bottomline --- I turn off the spell-checker because it is not multilingual, and does a very bad job for any person composing e-mails in more than one language. It's not that I "Just Don't Care", but rather that "Spell-Checkers Do A Lousy Job", in the modern multilingual world. The most blunt example is that I need to switch the spell-checker rules based on whether the e-mail recipient lives in US or UK... And I am supposedly composing an e-mail in "English" in both cases. It's a mess. As a side note, given that my native language is 100% phonetic and spelling rules are trivialized to the point where spelling errors are indistinguishable from typographical errors, I can only feel sorrow for all the native-English- speaking people who have to put up with the very concept of spell-checking, memorizing correct spelling for uncommon words, children devoting time to learn correct spelling in school, etc... If human languages were "made by design" (like programming languages are), I'd say English has by far the worst lexicographical syntax design of all human languages I ever came in touch with. ;-) The very existence of spell-checkers as helper tools just confirms that. HTH, :-) Marko -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
