Spell Catcher 1.0
By Casady & Greene
$40, Windows 95/98
1-800-359-4920
www.casadyg.com
This software gem from the Macintosh world now crosses over to the Wintel scene, and the best reply to that news is “bravo.”
Spell Catcher adds full-strength spell-checking, dictionary and thesaurus features to programs like WordPad and Notepad bundled into Microsoft’s Windows operating systems. Likewise, the software adds badly needed spelling help to America Online e-mail.
Possibly millions have felt compelled solely by the lack of spell-checking to make costly upgrades from the basic and free programs bundled with Windows to expensive software such as Microsoft Office or Lotus Smart Suite.
Windows WordPad already offers robust search-and-replace powers as well as the ability to create the full palette of fonts, set margins and create bullets and other commonly used word processing features.
Spell Catcher runs in the background and will either monitor typing in real time to catch errors on the fly or check stuff after the fact. If you come close, the software will present a box with a list of likely words that can be defined and improved upon using its dictionary and thesaurus.
The software, which includes a regular dictionary as well as scientific, legal and medical ones, worked without a hitch on several PCs. Other bells and whistles include a glossary function that lets you create boilerplate to insert automatically when you type in an abbreviation such as jc to create “By James Coates.”
