Spell Checking your Source Code

Powertoys — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 21:18:00 GMT

I’m going to try something new today… a pseudo review/comparison of two similar add-ins that people recently mailed me. Please let me know if you are interested in this style more in the future or if it was even helpful. I’ll remind readers of this blog that these opinions are mine and do not form any sort of Microsoft view one way or another. In the case below both options are free and worth trying on your own. I have a feeling that people will either like one or the other based on personal preference rather than performance.

Thanks. Josh

I can’t spell. I’ve grew up in the age of spell checking computers. Recently, with the advent of auto-correction I think I’ve gotten worse. Now I don’t even get the “red ink squiggly” as long as I’m “close enough”. This is no huge problem when it comes to e-mail, documents, or slides, but I can’t tell you how many code reviews I’ve had that ended with “Well, it all looks good, but did you know ‘sourceDirrectory’ is spelled ‘sourceDirectory’?”

Over the last couple of days I’ve been trying out two different VS Add-Ins for this problem.

1. Spelly.NET from WndTabs.Com

This add-in supports VC6, VS.Net 2002 and VS.Net 2003. If you have VS.Net 2003 however, be prepared for some extra install steps that include two extra downloads and adding information to the registry. It also must be re-registered if you don’t like the default install directory.

Once you do get it running you’ll see two spell-check buttons on your toolbar. One button is for checking source code and comments and the other is simply for strings and comments. The interface doesn’t provide you with a lot of options, but having these two buttons separated out was nice. It’s simply a spell check with no frills that offers alternatives.

Spelly was also nicer to me when I had commented out code. The second option seems to only want normal words in commented out code where as Spelly follows the same spell checking rules in both situations. I suppose I should just remove commented out code, but I’d prefer to do that on my own and not worry about it when I’m spell checking.

Grab it here: http://www.wndtabs.com/downloads

2. Spell Checker for VS.Net 2003 from Dotnet2themax.com

The install here was painless and it just worked the first time I used it. It’s always refreshing when that happens. This spell checker goes way beyond the basics and provides a bevy of options.

For starters you can have it iterate through entire projects at a time rather than having to open each file as you do with Spelly.Net. While you are spell checking you can also have it skip an entire line or file. Other options include defining regular expressions that declare words as either always correct or always misspelled. While both offer support for the basic file extensions this one allows you to define custom extensions to be checked as well.

One glitch with this option, IMO, was that if you started a spell check, closed the dialog, then tried to start a new check on another file or piece of text, it would assume you wanted to finish the one you started before. You have to learn to press “stop” then “start” again. Spelly assumes that each time it is run you killed off the previous check.

Grab it here: http://www.dotnet2themax.com/ShowContent.aspx?ID=10d5b7f6-8ffc-4e4f-9b0f-133b5fa3d79c

In Closing

Both checkers also seemed to work fine through the VSCmdShell code that I tested them on catching a lot of mistakes similar to…

const int paggeStep = 10;

const int sourceDirrectory;

and correcting to “pageStep” and “sourceDirectory”.

Both options require some training for the first few uses. By default they don’t understand that keywords like “bool”, “int”, and “const” are acceptable for use in your code. Option 2 will let you tinker with the settings more if you don’t like the way it works when it is first installed, but there was also something to be said for the simplicity of Spelly.Net. I felt like I spent too much time babysitting and tinkering with the spell checker from Dotnet2themax after the install. In the end I’ll probably use Spelly.Net more often for spot checks of new code or comments, but leave both installed because I do like some of the options (like check whole project) provided by the Dotnet2themax solution. They both have their uses. Good Times!

Feel free to respond with your opinions if you have tried the two.

Visual Assist X from Whole Tomato Software

Powertoys — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 19:26:00 GMT

People send me mail that asks "What about Visual Assist X?". This blog gets comments like "Tool X is nothing compared to the Whole Tomato stuff". In chats I've seen "Why don't you guys just buy the Whole Tomato stuff and ship it in the box?". I'll admit, they do some great work through our extensibility interfaces and giving them props in this blog was long overdue. So, if you haven't already, you should check out the free trial of Visual Assist X from Whole Tomato Software.

Some of this stuff (better code coloring, code templates, etc) you'll see in Whidbey, but there is a bunch of other stuff in there as well that we just aren't doing like the "hovering class browser", spell checking, automatic case correction, etc. Good times! Josh

VB6 MouseWheel Fix via Add-in

Powertoys — Tue, 18 May 2004 20:58:00 GMT

Thanks to dredge, today I discovered a solution for THE problem that plagued me since I started programming in VB6...

The VB6 MouseWheel Fix!!!

Now when I have to maintain my old VB6 projects I feel much more confortable... :-)

UPDATE: Many Thanks to robgruen, the original developer of the fix!

[Via Lorenzo Barbieri] Good times for people that still need VB6. I hear there are a lot of them... :-) Josh

Powertoys WebLog : VS 6.0

Spell Checking your Source Code

Visual Assist X from Whole Tomato Software

VB6 MouseWheel Fix via Add-in