21 replies to this topic

[antiduplicity]

When I start typing a new line, an email address or a forum post, the first word is ALWAYS scrambled. For example, I type Rainmaker and it displays as ainRmaker. What usually happens is that the first letter gets delayed and is placed randomly somewhere in the first word. So, what this means is when I open my email program and write an email, I must hit the backspace key because the email address is scrambled. I can no longer open a text editor or word processor and start typing immediately.

Now, when I type the first letter of my first word and count to three and then finish my word, it works. So, it is clear that my first letter is being cached or delayed for a second or two and then just placed wherever my cursor is.

The two programs I have installed that monitor the keyboard are Textexpander and Spell Catcher. Ido not know if these are interacting or not

Any advise is appreciated.

--

Michael
San Jose

[Evan Gross]

antiduplicity, on 23 June 2011 - 06:24 PM, said:

When I start typing a new line, an email address or a forum post, the first word is ALWAYS scrambled. For example, I type Rainmaker and it displays as ainRmaker. What usually happens is that the first letter gets delayed and is placed randomly somewhere in the first word. So, what this means is when I open my email program and write an email, I must hit the backspace key because the email address is scrambled. I can no longer open a text editor or word processor and start typing immediately.

Now, when I type the first letter of my first word and count to three and then finish my word, it works. So, it is clear that my first letter is being cached or delayed for a second or two and then just placed wherever my cursor is.

The two programs I have installed that monitor the keyboard are Textexpander and Spell Catcher. Ido not know if these are interacting or not

Any advise is appreciated.

--

Michael
San Jose

What application(s) does this happen in? Include their versions as well.

Does it happen in a well behaved app, like TextEdit?

Have you tried disabling TextExpander to see if that makes a difference?

[antiduplicity]

Evan Gross, on 23 June 2011 - 09:53 PM, said:

What application(s) does this happen in? Include their versions as well.

Does it happen in a well behaved app, like TextEdit?

Have you tried disabling TextExpander to see if that makes a difference?

It happens 100% of the time in every app accepts Text Input. I have turned off textexpander and the problem still exists. As stated if I type fast, it is 100% repeatable. The first letter is cached and released a second or two later.

[antiduplicity]

I typed “never let it happen again” in textedit and it came out like this

venr let it happen again

--

Michael
San Jose

[Evan Gross]

antiduplicity, on 23 June 2011 - 10:01 PM, said:

I typed “never let it happen again” in textedit and it came out like this

venr let it happen again

--

Michael
San Jose

Well, definitely something wrong with that. Has this always happened, since the first time you installed/used Spell Catcher? Or was it working at one time, and then started doing this?

It sounds to me like a damaged Spell Catcher X installation, or else some other 3rd party keystroke-related utility that's messing things up. But answer the above first.

[antiduplicity]

Evan Gross, on 23 June 2011 - 11:04 PM, said:

Well, definitely something wrong with that. Has this always happened, since the first time you installed/used Spell Catcher? Or was it working at one time, and then started doing this?

It sounds to me like a damaged Spell Catcher X installation, or else some other 3rd party keystroke-related utility that's messing things up. But answer the above first.

It worked for two days, then I bought it and it all went bad. So, it has not worked since I bought it. It worked for two days as a trial. This is what is concerning me.

If you feel the best course of action is to uninstall and reinstall, I would be happy to...let me know

--

Michael
San Jose

[Evan Gross]

antiduplicity, on 23 June 2011 - 11:15 PM, said:

It worked for two days, then I bought it and it all went bad. So, it has not worked since I bought it. It worked for two days as a trial. This is what is concerning me.

If you feel the best course of action is to uninstall and reinstall, I would be happy to...let me know

--

Michael
San Jose

Any chance you re-downloaded and re-installed Spell Catcher after you bought your license? There's no need to do so, but I sometimes hear from customers that (unnecessarily) do this.

If you DID do this, you may well have ended up with a bad installation.

So the recommendation would be to download a fresh installation disk image, and use what's on it to uninstall and reinstall. Get rid of any older downloads of the installer you might have handing around first!

Use the Uninstall Spell Catcher X Utility on the fresh download to uninstall. Use the default uninstall settings - none of your Learned Words or Shorthand Glossary files will be touched!
Then copy the Spell Catcher application from the (new, fresh) installation disk to your hard drive. Eject the installation disk image, then open Spell Catcher from your hard drive. Let it install the input methods, then let me know if it helped.

[antiduplicity]

Evan Gross, on 23 June 2011 - 11:41 PM, said:

Any chance you re-downloaded and re-installed Spell Catcher after you bought your license? There's no need to do so, but I sometimes hear from customers that (unnecessarily) do this.

If you DID do this, you may well have ended up with a bad installation.

So the recommendation would be to download a fresh installation disk image, and use what's on it to uninstall and reinstall. Get rid of any older downloads of the installer you might have handing around first!

Use the Uninstall Spell Catcher X Utility on the fresh download to uninstall. Use the default uninstall settings - none of your Learned Words or Shorthand Glossary files will be touched!
Then copy the Spell Catcher application from the (new, fresh) installation disk to your hard drive. Eject the installation disk image, then open Spell Catcher from your hard drive. Let it install the input methods, then let me know if it helped.

I recall not being able to get rid of the trial license previously so i did reinstall over the old install. So, I did as you asked and deleted the dmg, downloaded a new one and uninstalled with the new one. I then rebooted and installed it again. Things have been working well for the last 14 hours, so we may have fixed it. I will note any problems over the next couple of days and post them here if there are any. For now, I think we are on the right track.

--

Michael
San Jose

[Enkerli]

I’ve been having the same issue. As far as I can tell, pretty much from the moment I installed Spell Catcher. Basically, Spell Catcher seems to slow down my typing.
I also use TextExpander.
(My only use for Spell Catcher, up to this point, is with text services through Launchbar.)

[Evan Gross]

Can you elaborate on the exact problem you're having?

As I'm not familiar with Launchbar, can you explain how you're using Spell Catcher and how Launchbar's text services work?

[MediaBaron]

I'm having this same problem of erroneous type if I type quickly or have a macro input text. Mostly see this when I'm using WordPress since I use that a lot but I believe it also happens on other web-based platorms I use like Yammer. Just tested this forum area and I get the same errors inputting text here.

I also downloaded a fresh version of SpellCatcher X, ran the uninstaller. Installed the new version of SCX all following instructions several messages above in this thread. So these tests were performed via this new install. No errors occur if I use SCX when doing this test in TextWrangler or TextEdit.

I did some screen capture movies. It appears to be related to WebKit with Safari being the worst offender. Chrome has problems too but it appears to be more display driven as words will come out in spurts but contain no errors. Firefox, based on the gecko engine, sailed through using both the US and SCX input methods.

Tests were done on my MacBook Pro using iKey to type text at 300 characters/sec. Text input on WordPress 3.3.1 install.

See the results here:
http://www.hawaii247.com/scx/

Just added WebKit nightly build (just as bad as Safari) and Opera which was a little rough but no errors.

[JCR]

I'm seeing this same behavior in Lion Mail.

If I type with any quickness, characters appear in the body text out of order. Like this: uot fo roedr. (incidentally, Spell Catcher recognizes that those words are misspelled, and verbally says "Typo" when they are (mis) entered.

I've tried all suggestions found here in the forums:
Turning off "Check Spelling While Typing" via the Edit menu in Mail and Safari
Turned off "Check spelling: As I Type" in Mail preferences.
Disabling system-wide spell checking via "Correct Spelling Automatically" in the Language and Text preference panel panel
Uninstalling and re-installing Spell Catcher 10.4.1

Turning off interactive features in Spell Catcher for Mail has no effect.

Still having the problem in Mail.

Switching off Spell Catcher via the Input Source menu makes the problem go away. But this cannot apparently be done on a per-app basis.

Mail is unusable for composing under these conditions, so I was forced to disable Spell Catcher entirely.

[JCR]

I'm seeing this same behavior in Lion Mail.

If I type with any quickness, characters appear in the body text out of order. Like this: uot fo roedr. (incidentally, Spell Catcher recognizes that those words are misspelled, and verbally says "Typo" when they are (mis) entered.

I've tried all suggestions found here in the forums:
Turning off "Check Spelling While Typing" via the Edit menu in Mail and Safari
Turned off "Check spelling: As I Type" in Mail preferences.
Disabling system-wide spell checking via "Correct Spelling Automatically" in the Language and Text preference panel panel
Uninstalling and re-installing Spell Catcher 10.4.1

Turning off interactive features in Spell Catcher for Mail has no effect.

Still having the problem in Mail.

Switching off Spell Catcher via the Input Source menu makes the problem go away. But this cannot apparently be done on a per-app basis.

Mail is unusable for composing under these conditions, so I was forced to disable Spell Catcher entirely.

[Evan Gross]

How easily can you reproduce this?

Do you have "Text Replacement" selected in Edit > Substitutions > Text Replacement in Safari or Mail?

Any other 3rd party text/typing related utilities installed?
Does it happen in any other apps besides Mail and Safari?

You can *effectively" turn off interactive checking by deselecting the "Interactive Checking" item in Spell Catcher’s Input menu while a specific app is active (but leave Spell Catcher’s input method active). Have you tried that?

How fast (quantitatively) do you have to be typing before you see this happen?

[JCR]

Hi Evan,
The real issue is, I can't NOT reproduce it. Mail is unusable for composing a message if Spell Catcher is active in the input menu.

Disabling spelling and text replacement in Mail has no effect.

Turning of interactive checking has no effect at all.

"Turnngi off nitercatvie heccikn ghsa no effect ta lal."

The only thing that seems to fix the issue is to select the U.S. Flag icon from the input menu instead of Spell Catcher. Even if I try to create a set of custom application settings for mail and disable all Spell Catcher features, the issue occurs so long as Spell Catcher is selected in the menu.

I don't believe I have any other text-related utilities installed.

I haven't noticed any effect in Safari (for example, typing this reply in Safari is fine).

I am not a particularly fast typist. I have to slow down to a painfully slow pace (maybe 2-3 characters per second) to get around it,

What seems to be happening is that the character typed at the start of typing (after a space or a short pause) is somehow buffered, and there is a slight "stuck" delay during with the next 2-5 characters typed do no appear. Then Mail "catches up" and dumps the characters out on the page, only the first character of the word appears at the end of the buffered group.

In the example above, you can see that the word "checking" was rendered as "heccikn g" The initial "c" appeared 3-4 characters later in the word than it should have.

[Evan Gross]

Hmmm - not a known issue about Spell Catcher X and Mail (well, the "scrambled typing" one).

Do you have any Mail bundles/plug-ins installed? Are you sure about not having any other 3rd-party typing utilities installed? How did you check this?

[JCR]

I have

• MailTags
  
• Mail Act-On
  
• Spamsieve

mail bundles installed for mail.

It's an interaction with MailTags 3.0 preview. Disabling that bundle cures the text problem.

I will get in touch with the developer of MailTags to see what can be ironed out. I'll point him to this thread. Since it is still in preview (essentially beta) I have hope that since he is actively working on it, he can make changes to help.

In the meantime, is there any way to selectively disable Spell Catcher front he input menu for only Mail, or is that global?

Thanks,
John

[Evan Gross]

Sorry, no way to do that. I'll correspond with the developer to see exactly what's up.

[JCR]

Here is an updated from Scott the developer of MailTags. Might be of interest to you too, Evan.
I'll let you know if his new build fixed anything:


Hi John

I installed Spell catcher today and played around. While I didn't see the mixed up text, I did notice that with every keystroke MailTags was trying to rebuild its project Menu. The time spent to do this could be the cause of the text scrambling.


I have tracked down what was causing this -- something in SCX's code is prompting the Menu system to send a "MenuWillUpdate message" to any object that is the associated with items in the main menu. (thus the project menu)

I have dealt with this in this build -- but don't know if it will resolve your problem -- please test


In anycase, it should mean that it isn't wasting time rebuilding menus.

But I think that In this discovery that this may be the source of the other reports on the SpellCatcher thread.

Scott

[Evan Gross]

I'm corresponding with Scott about this - it's actually the Mac OS itself that's doing all the "excess" -menuWillUpdate: messaging. This is a long-time performance issue that I reported long ago (that nothing's been done about). Depending on the actual keyboard shortcuts assigned to the items in an input methods Input menu, along with what's being typed, the Mac OS can send this message (to the input method, at least) as many as 6 times. While Spell Catcher X does its best to deal with this efficiently, the reality is that there's only so much it can do - and still behave properly.

Anyway, stay tuned. It still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me why this would cause the order of keystrokes to get scrambled, but I'll know more soon when I hear back from Scott.