What is Spell Catcher 8?

Three years have passed since the last major update to Spell Catcher (Reviews, Nov/96 , p70), the universal spelling checker, thesaurus, and glossary. Rewritten as a background application — reducing potential conflicts — Spell Catcher 8 also has a revised interface. Bie new version also sports a dictionary with definitions and pronunciations, support for eight languages, and the ability to import lists of customized words from other programs.

Spell Catcher 8 still works in either interactive or batch mode. In interactive mode, it beeps whenever it suspects a misspelling, incorrect capitalization, double word, or punctuation error (the program now optionally ignores email addresses and URLs). You can dismiss this warning, make the correction manually, or ask for a recommended correction. When Spell Catcher displays possible corrections, pressing the number corresponding to the correction you want changes the error in your document, allowing you to continue typing. For misspellings you tend to make repeatedly, add the correction to your shorthand glossary so that in the future it changes automatically as you type — great for expanding common abbreviations. Editing glossaries is easy now that you can type carriage returns, punctuation marks, and tabs normally.

Of course, you can always teach Spell Catcher new words, which it saves to a special dictionary that augments the standard ones. New in Spell Catcher 8 is support for eight different languages: U.S, English, U.K. English, French, Canadian French, German, Swiss German, Italian, and Spanish. Also included are optional dictionaries for computer, geological and biological, HTML, legal, medical, and scientific and technical terms. You can even convert dictionaries from Correct Grammar, MacWrite II, Quark 3, SpellsWell, Thunder 7, Word, WordPerfect, or previous versions of Spell Catcher. By using a universal speUing check you maintain only one word list that works in all applications with a consistent interface, and you save disk space by deleting proprietary dictionaries.

All of the correction options in the interactive mode are also available when you process selections of text in batch mode. Suspect words appear in context, making it easy to tell if they’re actually in error. Spell Catcher preserves the formatting of the document while making the corrections.

The new Modify Selection dialog box offers 18 options for changing capitalization, converting tabs to spaces and vice versa, and other useful text modifications. You can combine these modules to automate routine alterations. Very useful!

Spell Catcher’s new Lookup window features a thesaurus with 1.5 million synonyms; antonyms; and related, compared, and contrasting words. There’s also a new 80,000-word English-only dictionary with definitions and pronunciation using Apple’s Text-To-Speech.

It’s pleasing to see all the new features and refinements in this latest revision of Spell Catcher. Anyone who uses a word processor or sends emails is doing a disservice to themselves and their readers if they don’t have Spell Catcher 8 installed on their Mac.

Linzmayer, Owen W. (November 1999). Spell Catcher 8. MacAddict. (pg. 60).

Download Spell Catcher 8 for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 8.1 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver