Slashdot Mirror
AbiWord beats OpenOffice to a Grammar Checker
msevior writes "The recently released AbiWord-2.4 (downloads for Linux, OSX and Windows here ) is the first Free Word Processor to offer an integrated Grammar Checker. We can can do this because we're a pure GPL'd application and so can easily collaborate with other Freely licensed applications like link-grammar, gtkmathview and itex2mml which provide AbiWord-2.4 with a superb Latex-based Math feature.
Sun's license requirements for OpenOffice.Org make it much more difficult for such collaborations to occur."
A grammar checker would be a good idea if:
...what the heck you dumb program! It's a freaking header! must all my headers be complete sentences?
- It is well implemented, from what I hear, Wordperfect's Grammatik used to be almost always correct and very useful,as opposed to Word's grammar checker that 's here just so that Microsoft can say "we have a grammar checker"
- It didn't try to 'improve your style'. I hate it whenever Word tries to encourage me not to use passive.Also my pet hate when Word underlines all my headers and says "fragment: consider revising"
- It can be easily turned off, and doesnt fill your page with green lines under every sentence.
it won't be as good as peer review or a professional proofreader, but it may spot that embarrasing mistake before you send that critical report to the customer at 11 pm..
Actual uses of grammar check:
- As a partner to spell check, find correctly spelled but misplaced words (eg: there and their).
- Find common brain-farts such as reduplicated words.
- Remind blame-ducking idiots that the passive verb makes their evasions obvious. Mistakes were made, my foot!
- Point out incongruities and neologisms, which some people might not know aren't cultured english, such as excessive verbing of nouns.
These are all tasks that require an ability to parse grammar, and they're actually useful.To call them "grammar checking" would be too strong, but I can't think of a better descriptive name.