Will spell check find double spaces?

[danwdoo]

Hello,
Will Scrivener's spell check eventually identify double spaces between words? Currently it does not and this is a nice feature for correcting a mistake that can be otherwise hard to find.

Thanks!

[Jaype]

Yes - it's one of the features that should be in by release. Thanks!

[danwdoo]

Excellent news!

[MetalWings]

*picky, picky*

Hopefully this will be possible to disable without turning off the rest of spell-check, or set to ignore two spaces if they follow a full stop/question mark/etc.? I'm of the school of thought that there should always be two spaces after the end of a sentence! (I always thought everyone was, but have recently discovered this is not the case...) Spell-check permanently picking that up could get very annoying quite quickly.

Yeah, it's not at all important. Just thought I'd note the other side.

[kdbertel]

...there are people who still use typewriters? (which is the only reason to have two spaces after a period)

I think the implication is that the spell check will pick up on doubled spaces between words where there isn't punctuation that would affect it. So "foo(space)(space)bar" would get caught, but "foo.(space)(space)Bar" would be fine.

[Jaype]

Ah - I've just looked into this again and actually the answer isn't as clear cut as I thought. The Mac version uses Apple's built-in spelling and grammar checker but in the Windows version this isn't the case - Lee is therefore going to be providing his own, which at last call was causing a few problems. Might have to wait and see what he comes up with and if it's not what you want or it can't in some way be customised, start that petition...

[kdbertel]

For some reason, I was under the impression that Lee was using Aspell, which is a pretty standard free spellcheck library.

[Jaype]

Doesn't double space come as a grammar, not spelling error? But yes - he's using Aspell for the spelling side.

[AmberV]

I too would classify entry errors like double-spaces as grammar/usage, not spelling. I don't think Aspell has a facility for detecting these, but it's a pretty thorough kit, so it might be as simple as configuring the right flag.

[kdbertel]

For linguistic purposes, I would consider it either grammar or (more specifically) typesetting. Remember, the origin of the double-space was the fact that before typewriters, typesetting would have a longer space between sentences than between words.

However, from a spellcheck algorithm point of view, I'd consider it a spelling thing, because it's just comparing characters. "Oh, we have a letter followed by two spaces followed by a letter! Looks like an error!". Though, to be fair, Word considers it a grammatical error ("Generally, words in a sentence should have one space between them"). Moot point.

Someone with more knowledge of Aspell may have to confirm/deny--and/or we get a confirmation/denial of Aspell being in ScrivWin to begin with.

[AmberV]

Oh it is definitely the Aspell library being used.

[MetalWings]

...there are people who still use typewriters? (which is the only reason to have two spaces after a period)

Lies. :p It helps tell sentences apart from each other and break up the Great Wall O' Text, my evil nemesis!

Afraid I don't know anything about Aspell, though. ^^'