Wish List

For topics about current BETA or future releases, including feature requests.
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roedygr
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Wish List

Post by roedygr »

Here is my wish list of features primarily I would like to make HTMLValidator better at spell checking. I have asked many times before and been rejected, however I am eternally optimistic these low priority wishes will eventually percolate to the top. The most important items are at the top of the list.

Treat entities embedded inside words as if there were the equivalent Unicode before looking them up in the spell check dictionary.

Allow some way to mark blocks of text with magic comments or styles to request they not be spell checked.

Pay attention to the lang markup and use the correct language dictionary. If there is no corresponding dictionary, suppress checking.

Batch check a set of documents for spelling. Auto close those without error. Leave those with errors open in the editor.

Spell checker than can handle tags embedded inside words, e.g. when acronyms are explained, e.g. URL (<span class=means><span class=ac>U</span>niform <span class=ac>R</span>esource <span class=ac>L</span>ocator</span>)

Command line operations fail if you move to a different directory without shutting HTMLValidator down first. It should let you leave it running all the time while to move from directory to directory feeding it files to validate.

Consolidate all the configuration menus in one place and reorganise them so finding something to configure is easier to find. Assign configuration options short names rather than numbers.

When doing a spell check run, it would be nice if HTMLValidator allowed you to you to type in a word not in the dictionary to correct. Currently you must stop the spell checker, correct the problem with editor, then restart the spell checker.
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Albert Wiersch
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Re: Wish List

Post by Albert Wiersch »

Thanks Roedy. I'll look into these for the next major release and see what I can implement.

I especially like the idea of a special comment to disable spell-checking for a section of a page. It can be like the special <!--cseignore--> comment to ignore sections of HTML.
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Albert Wiersch
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Re: Wish List

Post by Albert Wiersch »

roedygr wrote:Allow some way to mark blocks of text with magic comments or styles to request they not be spell checked.
Hello,

I've added new <!--cseignorespelling--> and <!--/cseignorespelling--> comments for the next v17 BETA. Would you like to test it out when the first BETA is ready? If so then please let me know. Note that the v17 BETAs will require a v16 license key.
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Albert Wiersch
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Re: Wish List

Post by Albert Wiersch »

roedygr wrote:Pay attention to the lang markup and use the correct language dictionary. If there is no corresponding dictionary, suppress checking.
It should already do this. Is it not?
roedygr wrote:Spell checker than can handle tags embedded inside words, e.g. when acronyms are explained, e.g. URL (<span class=means><span class=ac>U</span>niform <span class=ac>R</span>esource <span class=ac>L</span>ocator</span>)
It should already do this too.

Do you have the 'Ignore inline tags' option checked in the 'Spell Checking' options page in the Validator Engine Options?
roedygr wrote:Command line operations fail if you move to a different directory without shutting HTMLValidator down first. It should let you leave it running all the time while to move from directory to directory feeding it files to validate.
Can you give me more details about this (like steps to reproduce)?

What version of CSE HTML Validator are you using?
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roedygr
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Re: Wish List

Post by roedygr »

Are these recent improvments? I am still on 14.05. I mostly use HTMLValidator for spell checking. The Entities in the middle of words do the worst to screw up spell checking. I think it would be the easiest one to fix. My kludge to deal with the problem is to insert macros that take words without entities and convert them to words with entities. Before HTMLValidator, I turn off macro expansion. All it does in take them out of consideration for checking.
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Albert Wiersch
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Re: Wish List

Post by Albert Wiersch »

Hi Roedy,

There have been a couple major releases since v14. The major changes are listed here:
https://www.htmlvalidator.com/whats-new.php

Paying attention to the lang attribute was added in v14.00 so you should have that change (at least the initial change - it could have been improved since then). The 'Ignore inline tags' option was added in v10.0149.

The validator spelling message should account for character references in words, but the live spelling feature does not.

If you could provide specific examples of these issues (a way for me to reproduce them) then I can check them to make sure they are working as intended.

If you want to upgrade to v16 then I can send you a v17 BETA with the new spelling comment that lets you mark a section of the document to ignore for the purposes of spell checking.

Unfortunately I won't be able to look into some of these suggestions without more details and feedback.
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