Smart Spell

Smart Spell is an intelligent spelling correction system built into AutoTyper. It uses Apple's built-in spelling library, so it learns from all your other applications. And while Mac OS-X Snow Leopard contains some built-in spelling correction features, AutoTyper goes well beyond its abilities:

Smart Spell can cycle through multiple possible corrections with a hot key.
Smart Spell works in many applications that Snow Leopard correction does not.
Smart Spell gives you the option to correct with a hot key in a semi-automatic fashion, if you don't want to be subjected to continuous auto-correction.
Smart Spell can alert you to the substitution with Growl or a sound.

Activating Smart Spell

If you have just installed AutoTyper, you may have a Smart Spell group already set up. In this case you just need to tick the Enabled column to activate it. If not, from the Group action menu [], select Add Predefined Group ▶ Smart Spell. Then enable the new group that is added.

Because Smart Spell is aggressive in correcting spelling, you may want to take some action so that it doesn't become annoying:

You may want to disable Smart Spell in certain applications. For example, developers and people using a lot of text that is not prose might want to disable it in those applications.
You may want to play a sound or activate a Growl message when a correction takes place to alert you to the substitution.
You may decide to make Smart Spell to be hot key only. In this case click on the ⌨smart spell⌨ abbreviation, and select Delimiters ▶ expand after hot key only. Then make sure you have entered a hot key in Settings Hot Key to attempt expansion. In this case spelling correction will only take place when you hit the designated hot key.
You can use Smart Spell with regular expressions to only correct in certain situations. For example, you may not want to correct things in ALL CAPS because they are usually acronyms. In this case, you can change the default Smart Spell setup so that the Abbrev Type is not ⌨smart spell⌨, (which essentially matches all spelling errors) but is a regular expression that matches words with at least one lower case letter:
```
^.*[a-z].*$
```
If you have trouble teaching Apple-spell a word, set up a Plain Text AutoTyper expansion (probably with Case Adapt turned on) for the word that just expands to itself, so that it overrides spell checking.
Remember the quick disable key combination. Left arrow followed by right arrow is a special key sequence that will disable the next expansion.

Disabling Snow Leopard Spelling

While Snow Leopard's built-in spelling doesn't seem to have any adverse affects when running at the same time as AutoTyper, its a good idea to turn it off, just so you know what is doing the correcting, and to avoid any possible conflicts.

Applications that support Snow Leopard Auto-correct should have a menu Edit ▶ Spelling and Grammar ▶ Correct Spelling Automatically. Make sure this option is unchecked.

Using Smart Spell

With the standard configuration, Smart Spell will simply auto-correct your spelling as you go along, similarly to how Snow Leopard does it. However you have another option after you type a word. In AutoTyper Settings tab, make sure you have a hot key setup for Hot key to attempt expansion. You should choose a hot key with either Command (⌘) and/or Control(^). Don't choose a hot key that only involves Option (⌥) without Command or Control, because those key combinations are designed by Apple to produce actual characters, and is likely to conflict. Now after you type a word in an application, hit the hot key. Every time you hit the key it will cycle through all the possible spelling corrections for this word. When you find the one you want, keep typing.

If you hit the hotkey after a word that is already a correct word, the first time you hit the key nothing will happen. This lets you know that the word is already a correct word. But if you keep hitting the hot key, it will give you some more options.

This works slightly differently depending on whether you hit the hot key after or before a delimiter. If you type a delimiter like space, and you have auto-correct turned on, then you already know it was a correct word by the fact that no correction happened. In this case, hitting the hot key immediately goes to the next option.

Delimiters

You should carefully consider your delimiters. For example, I strongly suggest you should disable single quote ( ' ) as a delimiter, so that words like "don't" and "won't" are considered as one word, and not split into two.

Correcting Existing Documents

Traditionally, typing expansion programs can only correct things as you are typing. But AutoTyper is not thus limited. If you click in a document with the mouse, or move around with the arrow keys, AutoTyper can adapt to the new context, as if you had just been typing in that spot. What this means is, if you position the cursor directly at the end of a word, you can use the expansion hot key to correct the spelling in-place.

Priority

The explicit expansions take priority over Smart Spell expansions. If an abbreviation exists in AutoTyper for a word, Smart Spell will not work for that word. For this reason you should experiment whether you find the Common English Misspellings useful. You will probably find you are better off not using this set and deleting it.

Non-English languages

Because Smart Spell uses the Apple spelling libraries, it should work with any language in which OS-X has a spelling library.

To change the spelling language, go to the AutoTyper menu and select Edit ▶ Spelling and Grammar ▶ Show Spelling and Grammar. A dialog box should come up. If you don't see it, check that it isn't hidden behind other windows.

In the dialog box you can see the supported language, and select another language. The Automatic by Language option is ineffective in AutoTyper, because it doesn't own the document, but it works in AutoNotes.

Note: Most programs have a Show Spelling and Grammar menu. You need to change the language in AutoTyper/Automaton, not the program you are using.