Spelling Coach Professional 3.1 easily retains its title as the giant among spelling checkers. It takes four (count ’em!) 800K floppy disks just to hold all its files. But contained within those files is a collection of features that is unmatched by any other current competitor.
NEW AND IMPROVED The major new features of version 3.1 include a redesigned Control Panel (with improved auto-open options), clearer dialog boxes, greater flexibility in hot-key assignments, and — most significantly — Deneba’s Big Thesaurus (formerly a separate utility, it is now integrated into Coach). The thesaurus is the best I have ever seen on a computer and is — all by itself — almost enough reason to get Coach. Coach also includes three separate utilities for adding sets of legal, medical, and (new in this version) technical words to the main dictionary.
Coach remains a combined DA and cdev. It either checks words interactively (as you type) or batch-checks an entire document. The new version also offers full compatibility with almost all current word processors, including Word 4.0 and MacWrite II, and can even be used interactively with PageMaker.
In addition to its expanded thesaurus, Coach retains its “concise definitions” files, giving it almost all the features of a printed dictionary. (If you need to save disk space, the thesaurus and definitions files are optional.) And of course, there is the Merriam-Webster dictionary — which the program uses to flag grammatical mistakes (misplaced capitals, double words, and the like) as well as spelling errors.
The interactive checking mode is convenient to use and generally very fast. A minor complaint is that the pop-up menu does not provide an option that lets you type in corrections. In batch-check mode, an Analysis window is available that lists all the suspected misspelled words. From here, you can (among other things) quickly indicate all the words you want Coach to ignore. Ignored words are remembered for the duration of a session, so that subsequent checks do not flag them again. On the negative side. Coach conducts its batch check via the search-and-reptace functions of the active application rather than its own. This can be awkward and occasionally leads to unintended abortion of checks.
NEW AND WORSE My major complaint about Coach is that, for what should be a simple utility, it's not designed to be easy to learn. Coach depends heavily upon hot-key commands for many actions, yet it provides no easily accessible listing of what functions arc performed by certain commands. Unless you read the manual carefully, you may not even be aware that some functions exist. Similarly, Coach’s displays (particularly the Analysis window) use buttons labeled only by an (often cryptic) icon. It would have been far preferable to have the name of the button pop up when you clicked on it. As it is, too much memorization is required before you are comfortable using Coach.
In comparing Coach with Thunder II — the other leading interactive spelling hecker — Coach's biggest missing feature is a glossary function. Thunder II also scores points with its much smaller size and overall more intuitive interface, But Coach contains the thesaurus, concise definitions, and specialized dictionaries.
Coach was significantly slower in a one-page batch check than either Thunder II or the spelling checker included with MacWrite II. However, Coach slowed down the most when searching for words that were spelled correctly but not in its dictionary. I could have saved considerable time by pressing the Option key to halt these searches, but I didn't because I couldn't do that with the other programs. On the plus side. Coach does the best job of correctly identifying all the errors, but it doesn't tend to find the correct alternative to words with misspellings near the beginning of the word (it never suggested checker as an alternative to checker, for example).
Many users will remain content with their word-processing program's built-in spelling checker. But if you are among those looking for something better, and especially if having on-line access to definitions and a superior thesaurus appeals to you, then consider getting Coach. It's the closest thing to a complete dictionary currently available for the Mac.
Landau, Ted. (May 1990). Spelling Coach Professional 3.1. MacUser. (pgs. 74-75, 77).
Deneba Systems
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
1 / 
2021-11-28 / 
00943454e36add1e9cdb7f6982bde24d6810ce26 / 
/ 
Coach_Pro.sit_.hqx
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Mini vMac
