Saturday, June 25, 2016

Supplemental Spell Checking in OLW with tinySpell

The biggest feature I am missing in Open Live Writer is the lack of “real-time” spell checking when running it on a Windows 7 system.

My “fix” at the time of this post - Open Live Writer – we will (eventually) get through this – was to compose my post, copy/paste it into a session of Notepad++ where a spell check plugin was configured, and then correct any spelling issues back in the original post.

It worked but felt very clumsy.

So a few weeks ago I found a more streamlined solution.

  1. Download the free version of tinySpell – a free (and portable) spell checker.
  2. Launch tinySpell.
  3. Launch Open Live Writer.
  4. Compose post and fix spelling errors on-the-fly while composing as notified by tinySpell.

Done.

tinySpell comes in both installed or portable versions and there is also a tinySpell+ version as well for $ if you need more of the advanced features it offers.

You can easily add additional words into a custom dictionary. Set the application to run at system startup if desired. Make an audible beep if a spelling error is detected, and change the font size and color of the spelling tip notification.

tinySpell has restored my blogging confidence in using Open Live Writer as it continues through the development process.

Cheers!

--Claus Valca

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