What’s New in Spell Catcher X version 10.4.1

Spell Catcher X version 10.4.1 is a free upgrade to Spell Catcher X 10.4, and contains many new features, enhancements and improvements.

System Requirements Have Changed!

• Spell Catcher X 10.4.1 requires Mac OS X 10.5 and later, running on Intel Macintosh hardware.
• PowerPC Macintosh users must continue to use Spell Catcher X 10.4.
• Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger) users must continue to use Spell Catcher X 10.3.7.
• Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) users must continue to use Spell Catcher X 10.2.3.
• Mac OS X 10.2.x (Jaguar) through Mac OS X 10.3.8 users must continue to use Spell Catcher X 10.2.1.

The complete list of changes for previous versions can be referenced from the Version History page.

New

• New Cancel Last Expansion command in Spell Catcher’s Input menu. This will delete any text entered since the most recent shorthand expansion or completion. In most applications, this is generally equivalent to choosing Edit > Undo. There are some applications, however, where the Undo command may work differently—undoing more than you might want. The Cancel Last Expansion command is useful in such applications, particularly when you type an abbreviation that you didn’t mean to.
• New Special Key for use in shorthand expansions to explicitly specify the final position of the insertion point (Insert pop-up > Special Key > Position Cursor Here).
• Ability to show and sort by Date Modified in Shorthand Glossary document windows. Control-click the table column header to see a shortcut menu to set the visibility of the columns. It’s now possible to hide the Expansion column, as the Expansion is always visible in the text area on the right side of the window.

New for Mac OS X 10.7.x (Lion)

• Spell Catcher’s input method application (64-bit capable) makes use of new-in-Lion input method functionality. The most noticeable will be improved performance of DirectCorrect in many applications.
• The Spell Catcher application now “opts-out” of Lion’s “Reopen windows when logging back in” feature. This means that the Spell Catcher application will only open (at login) when required by its input method, or by the Mac OS X system-wide spelling checker.
• The Spell Catcher application now supports Lion’s suspend/resume functionality for the Preferences, Find in References, Check Word, and Edit Macro windows.

Enhanced

• Improvements to Spell Catcher > Get Updates and Languages window, adding a pane to display a full, styled text description of the selected update.

Updated

• Many internal code changes, primarily to support Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) features and capabilities.
• Minor performance improvements throughout.
• Built with Xcode 4.2.1 on Mac OS X 10.7.x (Lion).

Fixed

• Properly expand shorthands that include “Special Keys” when using the input methods Completion feature.
• Properly update the Spell Catcher application’s Dock icon on Lion.
• Fixes to long-standing problems extracting the correct name, license code, and e-mail address from text dropped or pasted to the License Manager window.
• Fixes to naming of Ghostwriter files and folders (input method application).
• Worked around bugs in Mac OS X’s Folder Manager that could prevent Scripting Additions from working in the Spell Catcher application.
• Numerous other far more obscure issues.

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What’s New in Spell Catcher X version 10.4

Spell Catcher X version 10.4 is a major upgrade from previous versions, and contains many new features, enhancements and improvements.

System Requirements Have Changed!

• Spell Catcher X 10.4 requires Mac OS X 10.5 (10.5.8 recommended), or Mac OS X 10.6 and later.

  Spell Catcher X version 10.4 is recommended for all Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) users.

• Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger) users must continue to use Spell Catcher X 10.3.7.
• Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) users must continue to use Spell Catcher X 10.2.3.
• Mac OS X 10.2.x (Jaguar) through Mac OS X 10.3.8 users must continue to use Spell Catcher X 10.2.1.

Important Information Regarding Language Plug–Ins

All language plug–ins have been updated for Spell Catcher X 10.4! In the Spell Catcher application, choose Spell Catcher > Get Updates and Languages, or Help > Spell Catcher Languages Page, to download the latest version(s) of any language plug–ins you use. Languages are also available on our website: http://www.rainmakerinc.com/products/languages/.

The complete list of changes for previous versions can be referenced from the Version History page.

New

• Includes MobileMe Syncing of Reference documents and Modify Selection Macros. Spell Catcher’s MobileMe Sync implementation allows selective syncing of your References, and includes the ability to Undo changes due to a Sync.
• Ability to create and use Styled Text shorthand expansions. This feature relies on new–in–Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) support for insertion of styled text by input methods. Requires using Spell Catcher’s input method application, and that the application being used supports styled text insertion.
• Shorthand Glossary document windows have undergone major changes to edit styled text expansions, and complete Font and Text submenus, along with a Make Plain Text command have been added to Spell Catcher’s Format menu.
• It’s now possible to “nest” shorthands — in other words, define shorthand expansions that include other shorthands. You can easily add a nested shorthand to an expansion by dragging that shorthand into the expansion text.
• Styled Text shorthand expansions will expand with styles when chosen from the input method’s Completion pop-up window.
• Added the ability to define “numeric unit” shorthands. Shorthands abbreviations that are prefixed with the “#” character will be automatically appended to numeric value that are typed. For instance, the shorthand “#c” → “°C” will cause “24.5c” to expand to “24.5°C”.

Updated

• Updated to version 11.2.31 of the Proximity Linguistic System (PLS). In addition to code improvements, PLS 11.2.31 includes the following new and updated spelling databases:
  • U.S. English:
    • Updated U.S. English Main Spellings, adding about 210 new words, removing 2 errors.
  • British English:
    • Updated British English Main Spellings, adding about 190 new words, removing a misspelling pair that was not correct for British.
  • Canadian English:
    • Updated Canadian English Main Spellings, adding about 40 new words.
  • French:
    • Updated French Main Spellings, removing a couple of redundant entries and added 1 new word.
  • Italian:
    • Updated Italian Main Spellings, removing 10 redundant entries.
  • German: Updated German Main Spellings, improved the part of speech information, added 15 words, corrected the spelling of 23 words, and removed a misspelling.
    Updated German 1996 Main Spellings to fix the spelling of about 160 words that changed during the language reform of that year.
  • Swiss German: Updated Swiss German 2006 Main Spellings, updated to conform with standard German.
  • Swedish: Updated Swedish Main Spellings, adding a few abbreviations.
  • Dutch: Updated Dutch Main Spellings to correct a handful of words that had a comma on the end. We also added more Dutch number words, some nationalities, words derived from place names, 66 ethnic and geographical words, about 50 new compound words, and about 80 new general words. Two words with incorrect triple-e construction were deleted.
    Updated Dutch 1995 Spellings to add about 45 new words. About 20 words with improper character encodings were fixed.
  • Russian: Updated Russian Main Spellings, adding over 5,800 new words and removing 13 forms of a single misspelled root word. Also removed a large number of incorrect verb inflections.
  
  To update your language plug-ins, in the Spell Catcher application, choose Spell Catcher > Get Updates and Languages, or Help > Spell Catcher Languages Page. Standard languages are also available for download on our website: http://www.rainmakerinc.com/products/languages/.

Enhanced

• Sorting by duplicate status (when “Show Duplicates” is selected) in Learned Words, Compiled Learned Words, Omitted Words, and Shorthand Glossary document windows. New menu commands in the Spell Catcher application to easily select “interesting” duplicates (View > Duplicates > Select All/Conflicting/Possible Duplicates).
• Creation of new spelling–related References from the References preference pane of Spell Catcher Preferences.
• Improvements to the input method’s Completion pop-up window. Help tags for shorthands now display the abbreviation and expansion. Items that display informative information for Thesaurus completions are now drawn disabled, as typically they would not be used as actual completions.
• Styled Text shorthand expansions will expand with styles when chosen from the input method’s Completion pop-up window.
• Many user interface modernizations, improvements and enhancements. Almost every element of the software has been updated! Most notable:
  • The Look Up window has been updated in numerous ways.
  • Inspector windows replace the drawers for shorthand expansion previews, and Online Dictionary Server/Database info.
  • Action buttons replace the functionality of push buttons in many windows, reducing screen real estate requirements and clutter. Includes the Find in References window, Edit Macros window, References pane of Spell Catcher Preferences.
  • Many improvements to the Check Selection window.
  • The Find in References window now allows selection of multiple items. This is handy if you want to Forget a word from more than one reference at once. Also useful for the View and Show in Finder commands.
  • Where lists of Spell Catcher documents appear in the user interface (references, macros, etc.), a path control is shown displaying the selected item’s location on disk. Double-click to Show in Finder.
  • Wider adoption and use of shortcut menus (control or right–click).
• Shorthand Glossaries that reside in Spell Catcher’s Additional References Application Support folder (i.e. the default ones such as “Words to Correct”) are now searched for matching abbreviations last. This results in more predictable behavior if you define your own shorthand that has the same abbreviation as one of these References.
• Spell Catcher’s “helper” applications all run in 64-bit mode (on supporting systems). Specifically, these are the Spell Catcher SpellServer and Spell Catcher Services background applications.
• Spell Catcher’s Spotlight Plug-In and Quick Look generator have been updated to handle new Spell Catcher X file formats and any associated features. For example, the Quick Look generator displays styled text shorthand expansions as expected.
• Many internal code changes, primarily to support Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and later features and capabilities, and to remove or replace older Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) specific support.

Fixed

• Creation of “Daily” Ghostwriter folders with the input method application.
• Reversal of Keyboard Shortcuts containing the right and down arrow keys.
• Numerous other far more obscure issues.

Spell Catcher X Version History