I'm running a pretty old version of UE, and am wondering if a feature that annoys me has been changed.

The spellcheck in version 10, there is no way to spellcheck from the cursor forward.
So when checking a large file (and I edit hundreds of pages in one file) if I stop the check because I've noticed something I want to fix (such as doing a search and replace through the file to fix some common error), when I go back to finish checking the file, it starts right at the beginning of the file, and pauses again at any words that I had marked as "ignore" (such as duplicated words, or misspellings that were deliberate, but I did not want to add to the dictionary).

I know that you can also select a section of the file and check that, but I found this very unreliable, it would not check all the words selected if the region was large. I reported this as a bug some time ago, but nothing was done.

Anyway, can UE now (reliably) check from the cursor forward, as just about every other word processor does?

Spell check from current position of the caret to end of file is also not possible in currently latest version of UltraEdit except when first using Ctrl+Shift+End to select this block.

There are other spell checking enhancements like spell checking while typing or toggling spell check while typing on/off quickly by command (toolbar or hotkey) with showing a red dotted line below every misspelled or unknown word when enabled. That makes a full dialog based spell check of entire file or just selected block more or less unnecessary in my practical experience.

Too bad then. That was the only feature I'd been hanging out for.
As I said, I tried selecting to end, it always skipped a few paragraphs.

I work with text files of 100,000 words or more, several hundred pages, and I have to spend sometimes hours checking and correcting them. Having to restart over and over is driving me crazy. This isn't my typing I'm checking, I don't compose these files to begin with, so dotted lines aren't much help; I'd have to visually scan hundreds of pages and probably miss errors.

Wordstar would check from the cursor on in the mid 80s. Every word processing program I've used since does. Except UE. It's one key to just jump to the beginning if I really want to start there.

Maybe I'll have to paste it into Word to spellcheck.
I hate Word, but this is one thing it does better.

Thanks for lettng me know.

UltraEdit isn't really made for word processing. It is a plain text editor, which is ideal for programming and scripting.

You should be able to open it within Word, and not have to "paste" it in. Word opens plain text files. Just be sure to "Save As" "Plain Text" when you're done so as not to add formatting to the document.

It might be helpful to email a feature request to IDM at the email address at the top of the forums, as they do not monitor the forums here.

rhapdog wrote:UltraEdit isn't really made for word processing. It is a plain text editor, which is ideal for programming and scripting.

I've been using it for about 15 years, I know exactly what it is.
I do DTP. My files are ASCII text. The mark up code I use is quite similar to HTML. So I AM "coding" and do a lot of scripting.
I do batch and Avisynth and occasionally perl. Back in the 70s, C, but that's pretty rusty.

UE does everything I need. Except spellcheck.
Almost all "scanning" operations, like search and replace, default from the cursor position. Only spellcheck rolls back to the beginning of the file.

rhapdog wrote:You should be able to open it within Word, and not have to "paste" it in. Word opens plain text files. Just be sure to "Save As" "Plain Text" when you're done so as not to add formatting to the document.

Thanks, I worked that out for myself some time ago. I've been using Word since version 4 for DOS. It's hard to avoid, much as I would like to.

rhapdog wrote:It might be helpful to email a feature request to IDM at the email address at the top of the forums, as they do not monitor the forums here.

I did, about 10 years ago. Meade wasn't interested. I was reminded of the forum and thought it was possible with all the upgrades since he might have implemented it, but clearly he hasn't. I'll make a note to check back in another 10 years.

AlanG wrote: I've been using Word since version 4 for DOS. It's hard to avoid, much as I would like to.

I prefer Open Office. It does the job, and gets me away from costly upgrades.

AlanG wrote: I did {send an email for feature request}, about 10 years ago. Meade wasn't interested.

I'd send again. A lot has changed in 10 years, including what IDM is interested in supporting. Spell checking is something that I still have to go into another program to handle, but would prefer to do it within UE in several cases myself. Especially after a session of OCR to a text file. Doing the global search and replace to get rid of the strange characters that seem to always come up, like change all occurrences of l' to f, and a few other minor irritants is much easier within UE.

I'd like to ask that you send a new feature request again. I'll do the same. It sure would come in handy about once a month when I have to scan documents for archival, or on the occasion when I scan an out of print book, or scan a book I'd rather read in electronic format. (It happens.)

rhapdog wrote:Doing the global search and replace to get rid of the strange characters that seem to always come up, like change all occurrences of l' to f, and a few other minor irritants is much easier within UE.

The initial spell check of a large book can take me all day, or longer if it's particularly bad, or has a lot of foreign words. Often the error that pops up with the spell check needs me to abort the dialog and edit, e.g. to join two words; or s&r throughout if it's come up a few times. And then I slide down the snake to the beginning and have to click "ignore" on all the one-offs again.

rhapdog wrote:I'd like to ask that you send a new feature request again. I'll do the same. It sure would come in handy about once a month when I have to scan documents for archival, or on the occasion when I scan an out of print book, or scan a book I'd rather read in electronic format. (It happens.)

I'll give it a try, maybe he's mellowed.