Sonny Software

I guess my years-long dream of seeing OSX's global spell checking in Bookends is not coming true. In that case, could at least parts of the app. incorporate it?

Specifically, what I'm thinking is the "Notes" tab. I do a lot of note taking there and that's where I could use spell checking the most. I know that Carbon apps can call Cocoa APIs, so perhaps you could make the Notes screen just a TextEdit within Bookends? As it stands, I'm having to have to type out my notes, then copy & paste the contents into an external text editor, spell check, and paste that back into Bookends, and it's really not fun. Every time I'm typing in Notes knowing that my typos aren't being checked, I feel like switching to Sente... then I'll check Sente's website and forums and am reminded that it, too, has its drawbacks and refrain myself. However, I fear that one day some or all of those drawbacks will be eliminated, and this lack of global spell checking will be the last straw that will drive me away from Bookends.

As a long time user of Bookends, I'd like to remain loyal. However, this is just one thing that continues to bug me each and every day I interact with Bookends.

And no, I won't spend $40 on another software (Spell Catcher X) when all I need/want is a feature built into the OS, especially when said software has not been updated in nearly 2 years, during 1 of which there have been known issues with Leopard.

Hi,

Spell checking isn't high up on the list of things to do, but it is on the list.

Jon
Sonny Software

Hi,
I was going to make a feature request for "Global Spell Checking," but then noticed this had been requested once before. So, I thought I would just bump this current thread.

Jon, has any more thought been given to this feature? I know for me, it's a real pain to have to work back through long bibliographies/reference lists to correct typos and spelling mistakes after I've created and formatted my bibliographies/lists. I would also echo the sentiments of the original poster RE: spell checking of notes, especially now that the note-taking feature in BE includes note cards and note streams.

One thing I did notice: If you were to implement the global spell checking feature included in the Mac OS, one of the things I like about that feature that might conflict with BE has to do with the contextual menu that is activated (in Mac) when you ctrl+click on a highlighted miss-spelled word.

Currently, if you ctrl+click on the main title in the "Main" tab, a contextual menu pops up asking if you want to "Put the selected text in the Short Title field." This current feature might need to be changed to something like ctrl+alt+click, as to allow for the implementation of the full Mac global spell check functionality.

Thoughts?

Hi,

Nothing has changed. But thanks for pointing out the potential Control-click conflict. We'd have to deal with that if spell checking is ever implemented.

Jon
Sonny Software

I will just say this. I'm still at 10.6.3, and, just out of principle alone, refuse to upgrade to 11 or above, unless spell checking is implemented. I can't think of any other application on my Mac right now in which I do as much, or even less, typing as I do in Bookends, that does not have either a built-in spellchecker, or access to the OSX spell checker. DevonThink Pro (check), Evernote (check), Mellel (check), MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint (check), hell, Adium even has spell check.

I won't threat to go to another app, as I like Bookends, and I don't see anything out there that'll be significantly better. But, in a way, that is also going to keep me from upgrading. It works good enough as it is, and frankly, I just don't believe you deserve any more of my money unless/until you incorporate what really should be considered a fundamental feature in any application that involves typing more than 3 words at a time.

I have nothing new to say about this. If/when I do you'll see it here.

BTW, you should be using 10.6.4, which is a free update if you own 10.6.3:

http://homepage.mac.com/jda1/Bookends1064.dmg.zip

Jon
Sonny Software