Share via


Spell checker update 2.1: a few bug fixes and couple of new features

This article is obsoltete. Please look here for newer version https://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2008/11/29/spell-checker-update-2-2-full-support-for-vs-2008-sp1-simpler-setup-and-a-few-bug-fixes.aspx  

Bug fixes:

  1. <param>Text</param> was not handled correctly.
  2. Comments in <% %> blocks were not included in spell checking.
  3. Spell checking terminated prematurely under certain conditions after encountering <% %> block.
  4. REM VB comments were not always handled correctly.
  5. Vista setup issues fixed (hopefully)

New features:

  1. It is now possible to add word to "ignore" list. The list is global and is stored as a text file.
  2. You can also add words to the Office active custom dictionary.

Spell Checker 2.1

List of word to ignore is a Unicode text file and stored in your user roaming profile folder. It is shared across VS 2005 and VS 2008 add-ins if you have both versions installed.

Spell Checker 2.1 ignore list location

Microsoft Office custom dictionary file is also a Unicode text file that is stored in the roaming profile in the Microsoft\UProof folder

Microsoft Office custom dictionary location

You can either either file in Notepad. Alternatively, you can edit list of words in the Office custom dictionary using Microsoft Word facilities:

Microsoft Word menu

Microsoft Word proofing options Microsoft Word custom dictionary editor

Since using custom dictionary and ignore list introduces certain perfomance hit (which depends on the dictionary size), you can turn it off in rules.xml file located in the Spell Checker installation folder (typically C:\Program Files\VS 2008 Spell Checker Add-In ) and change useOfficeCustomDictionary and/or useIgnoreList to 0.

<options>
<useOfficeCustomDictionary>1</useOfficeCustomDictionary>
<useIgnoreList>1</useIgnoreList>
</options>

For multilanguage spell checking, please look here and here. More details on how spell checker works and its various options can be found here

Important note: Add-in does not work with Visual Web Developer Express as Express editions are not extensible.

Visual Studio 2005 Add-in download

Visual Studio 2008 Add-in download

Troubleshooting

If after setup add-in does notnot show up in Visual Studio Tools menu, try installing component in admin mode. Save downloaded MSI file on disk, locate command prompt icon in the Windows Start menu (typically in Accessories folder), right click on it and select Run As Administrator. Then run MSI file from the admin command window. If, for some reason, add-in still does not appear in Visual Studio, try running regsvr32 vsspellchecker.dll from the admin command prompt in the add in installation folder. Some more information about add-in registration is here.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 31, 2007
    Bug fixes: &lt;param&gt;Text&lt;/param&gt; was not handled correctly. Comments in &lt;% %&gt; blocks

  • Anonymous
    December 31, 2007
    Bug fixes: &lt;param&gt;Text&lt;/param&gt; was not handled correctly. Comments in &lt;% %&gt; blocks

  • Anonymous
    December 31, 2007
    Thanks for this tool!  I had to use the regsvr32 trick to get it to show up in the Tools menu, but now it works... except that I don't get the new right-click menu that would allow me to ignore words. Right-clicking on either the underlined word or on the corresponding info item just shows the normal menu. Could this be because I'm using the spell checker on C# projects rather than web projects?  My system: Visual Studio 2005, Office 2007, Vista 64. Manually creating the .ignore file did work, though you should probably note in your blog that the file format must be UTF-16 rather than the .NET default of UTF-8.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2008
    I just came upon a great little add-on for Visual Studio 2005/2008 by Mikhail Arkhipov.&#160; It's a

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2008
    Is there any way that the next version of your add-in could include some kind of Settings UI for these options? Either as a menu item or a plugin to the IDE's "Tools|Options" dialog? Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2008
    Buenas interesante update del Spell Checker de Mikhail Arkhipov , para Visual Studio 2005 / Microsoft

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2008
    Buenas interesante update del Spell Checker de Mikhail Arkhipov , para Visual Studio 2005 / Microsoft

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2008
    Buenas interesante update del Spell Checker de Mikhail Arkhipov , para Visual Studio 2005 / Microsoft

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2008
    This looks like a great add-in that will definetly be used in my web development.

  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2008
    Just a thought, In a later version could you include Camel case (camelCase) regards Steve

  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2008
    Chris: please use double-click, not right click. See original documentation here: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikhailarkhipov/archive/2006/04/17/spell-checker-for-html-and-asp-net-pages.aspx Yes, text file is Unicode. Unicode is not UTF-8, UTF-8 is Unicode encoded as multibyte. I meant real double-byte format which starts with 0xFFFE. :-)

  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2008
    Steve: when you can camelCase - do you mean variable names in comments or something else? Spell checker is able to handle camel case in comments to an extent. Can you give me an example which is not handled?

  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2008
    Why only HTML files? I could see great use of this for code summaries in class files. I can't imagine that should be too hard to add either.

  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2008
    Whoops I take that back. Turns out that the reason I didn't have that support was that I needed to run the regsvr32 as well...

  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2008
    "Chris: please use double-click, not right click." Thanks, that works!  The context menu looked liked a right-click menu, so double-clicking never occurred to me... "Yes, text file is Unicode. Unicode is not UTF-8, UTF-8 is Unicode encoded as multibyte. I meant real double-byte format which starts with 0xFFFE. :-)" Well, not to argue with you, but Unicode is a single standard with multiple encodings, and UTF-16 has surrogate sequences just like UTF-8, only fewer of them.  So if having no surrogate sequences is important to you I'm afraid you'll have to change your file format to UTF-32. :)

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2008
    Great tool, It would be nice if we have support for checking methods, params, and var names. Supporting ProperCase and camelCase and all sorts of prefixes (_ m_ ).

  • Anonymous
    January 04, 2008
    I installed this, and the Add-In Manager reports that it's running, but I don't see any highlighting despite trying several oddball misspellings! Has anyone seen this working alongside the ReSharper add-in?

  • Anonymous
    January 04, 2008
    Buenas interesante update del Spell Checker de Mikhail Arkhipov, para Visual Studio 2005 / Microsoft...

  • Anonymous
    January 09, 2008
    I had a problem after installation of this add-in to both VS2005 and VS2008 on Vista Business. It said: class not registered (or something similar). I solved it by registering the dlls myselft: > regsrv23.exe vsspellchecker.dll Oh, I found the same suggestions here: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikhailarkhipov/archive/2006/04/18/578529.aspx

  • Anonymous
    February 14, 2008
    I too had to run regsvr32 manually under vista. But My problem is that I want to use your macro to spell check the entire project and I found a problem. If you open a page and click tools - Spell Checker it works fine. If you record a temporary macro which only records this step Public Module RecordingModule Sub TemporaryMacro()      DTE.ExecuteCommand("SpellChecker2005.Connect.SpellChecker")    End Sub End Module I get an exeption when I run it.


Error

Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040104

OK  

Any ideas?

  • Anonymous
    February 19, 2008
    Will the spell checker allow us to check string variables in a later update?

  • Anonymous
    February 26, 2008
    I have installed the add-in in VS2005. When I double-click on a misspelled word VS2005 crashes. "The exception unknown software exception (0xc0000409) occurred in the application at location 0x012043e9." Any suggestions?

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2008
    Thanks for the great Add-in! Any chance of adding support for spell checking XML/XSLT comments (i.e., <-- XML Style Comment -->) in the future?

  • Anonymous
    April 15, 2008
    You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com