Spell Check Dialog

The Spelling dialog of TX Spell .NET walks the user through the misspelled words of a document, one word at a time: it shows the word in its sentence, lists suggestions and offers to change, ignore or learn the word. Each part of the dialog is described below, together with what each button does and how to decide where the dialog opens and how a check ends.

Which Dialog This Is

A TextControl with a connected spell checker offers two spelling dialogs. TX Text Control opens its own preconfigured dialog from the Spell Check Dialog... item of its context menu. The dialog described here is the one of TX Spell .NET, a SpellCheckDialog that you get from the SpellCheckDialog property of the TXSpellChecker. It checks a TextControl as well as a TextBox, a RichTextBox or any other control, and you can change its buttons, texts and behavior.

Both dialogs look alike to the user. Checking on Demand compares them and shows when to choose which.

The Parts of the Dialog

The dialog has the title Spelling. Its parts are numbered in the picture below and described in the table after it:

The three groups of buttons at 3, 5 and 7 are collections of the SpellCheckDialog: IgnoreButtons, ChangeButtons and OptionButtons. The preview at 2 is described by Preview, the list at 4 by SuggestionList and the list at 6 by SuggestionDictionaryComboBox. Customizing the Spell Check Dialog changes the buttons and the preview, and Suggestion Controls the two lists.

What Each Button Does

Each button of the dialog has a type, a value of TXSpell.ButtonType, that decides what a click does:

Add To Dictionary is enabled only when a user dictionary has been added to the dictionaries of the spell checker; in the picture, none has. User Dictionaries shows how to add one.

Two more types change a button while the dialog is open:

• Delete replaces a button when the current word repeats the word before it, as in "the the". It removes the repeated word. A button becomes a Delete button when its IsDeleteButton property is true.
• Undo Edit replaces a button as soon as the user edits the sentence in the preview. It discards the edit. A button becomes an Undo Edit button when its IsUndoEditButton property is true; when no button has it set, the preview can't be edited.

When the user presses Enter, the dialog clicks its AcceptButton, which is Ignore Once by default.

Open the Dialog

Show opens the dialog. For a TextControl, pass the control; the dialog finds the misspelled words and applies each correction to the document:

private void ButtonSpelling_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    txSpellChecker1.SpellCheckDialog.Show(textControl1);
}

For any other control, call Check with its text first and then Show(this), which passes the window that owns the dialog. The dialog then walks through the words Check found, and your code applies each correction in the IncorrectWordChanging event. Checking on Demand shows both ways step by step.

What the Dialog Checks

One dialog can check more than one editor, and more than the main text of a document. For a TextControl, the dialog checks the main text and then the headers, footers and text frames, and Change All and Ignore All reach into all of them; Checking Text Parts shows how to choose the parts. The dialog can also continue from one control to the next, so that the user checks a whole window in one pass, as Checking Multiple Controls shows.

Choose Where the Dialog Opens

By default, the dialog opens in the center of the screen. ShowDialogSettings sets its owner and its start position. Set them once, for example in the constructor of the window, after the spell checker is taken from the resources:

using TXTextControl.Proofing;
using TXTextControl.WPF.Proofing;

public MainWindow()
{
    InitializeComponent();
    txSpellChecker1 = (TXSpellChecker)FindResource("txSpellChecker1");

    // Center the dialog on this window instead of the screen
    txSpellChecker1.SpellCheckDialog.ShowDialogSettings.Owner = this;
    txSpellChecker1.SpellCheckDialog.ShowDialogSettings.StartPosition = TXSpell.DialogStartPosition.CenterOwner;
}

The code works as follows:

• txSpellChecker1 is a field of the window. The spell checker is declared as a resource in XAML, as As-You-Type Checking shows, and FindResource returns it.
• Owner is the Window that owns the dialog.
• StartPosition takes a value of TXSpell.DialogStartPosition: CenterScreen, the default, CenterOwner, or Manual, which opens the dialog at the screen coordinates in Location.
• Both namespaces are needed: the dialog classes are in TXTextControl.WPF.Proofing, the TXSpell enumerations in TXTextControl.Proofing.

To open the dialog where the user left it, read the Location of the SpellCheckDialog after it closes. It holds the last position of the dialog's upper-left corner, and null before the dialog was shown for the first time.

Decide How a Check Ends

Two properties of the SpellCheckDialog decide what the user sees when the last word is handled:

Set ShowMessageBoxes to false to report the result in your own way, for example in a status bar.

The SpellCheckDialogOpening and SpellCheckDialogClosing events of the TXSpellChecker fire when the dialog opens and closes. Events shows what their arguments carry.

Next Steps

• Customizing the Spell Check Dialog: add, remove and rename buttons, and change the font and the preview.
• Options Dialog: the settings the Options... button opens.
• Suggestion Controls: the suggestion list and the dictionary list of the dialog.
• Localization and Resource Kit: show the dialog in the language of the user.
• Checking on Demand: open the dialog from a button, for TX Text Control and a TextBox.