Why is it that most every application on this planet on the operating systems I’ve used so far is either not doing any decent spellchecking (we’re not even talking grammar checking yet), or brings along dozens of megabytes of dictionaries and then can’t handle multiple languages gracefully? Looking at my blog you’ll see that I write in two languages, and that’s true with almost any writing I do, from email to internal notes. My editor (emacs) can handle multiple languages. My email application on Windows can (The Bat!). And often enough I have to use Word for Windows, that can also do it. But they have separate dictionaries, so all the words I teach them, I have to teach all of them. And at the same time, I do more and more of my writing in web browsers, and those don’t spell-check at all.
Come on! There’s so many smart things user interfaces can do. Why can’t they do something that basic? It would certainly improve many peoples lives.
(By the way, my offline blog editor can handle english, but not german. Sigh.)
